New Arrests in Human Smuggling Operations at Mexican Border

[DogPoundPup]

Source: PBS

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was arrested May 16 in San Diego on suspicion of allowing smugglers to drive illegal aliens and drugs through a U.S.-Mexico border checkpoint.

It's the latest arrest in a string of recent cases of corrupt U.S. border officials involved in smuggling humans.

Luis Francisco Alarid worked at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, about seven miles east of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the world's largest land border crossing point. According to court records obtained by FRONTLINE/WORLD and The New York Times, federal investigators watched Alarid on several occasions fail to properly check vehicles as they passed through his inspection lane.

As part of the investigation, police found dozens of illegal immigrants and hundreds of pounds of marijuana that federal agents suspect Alarid allowed smugglers to sneak into the country.

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2008/05/usmexico_border.html

[Zorra]

1. This is not surprising.

A very high percentage of the agents that work our southern border are US citizens of Hispanic descent. Many were hired partly because they speak Spanish fluently.

Odds are that many of them have family living in Mexico, and/or they have other ties to the country.

So sometimes things like this are going to happen.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?