Nine South Texas lawmen have been charged or sent to prison in the past 16 months for using their badges to sneak drugs or guns through the U.S.-Mexico border region from Laredo to Brownsville.As for the Border Patrol, it's been reported that as many as one in 100 agents are presently under investigation for corruption of misconduct.
The lawmen's downfalls, an indication of growing corruption prosecutions, are all linked to Mexico's lucrative drug cartels, which long have sought to infiltrate not only federal border guards but local officers patrolling U.S. towns along the Rio Grande.
"I thought we knew these people like the back of our hand," said Laredo police investigator Joe Baeza. "But then again, if you look at the back of your hand every five years, it changes."
Laredo officer Orlando Hale hyperventilated when federal agents showed him photographs of him meeting with a supposed cocaine trafficker he aided by escorting loads through the city, court records show.
So began a nightmare for Hale, whose parents are law-enforcement veterans.
He was convicted by a jury and got 24 years.
Others who got busted include police officers, deputies and constables, as well as one high-ranking official, Sullivan City's police chief.
None of the corruption cases appears to involve the classic cartel threat of offering "silver or lead," the practice of demanding the target "take our money and live, or turn us down and die." The tactic has devoured police departments in Mexico.
Instead, interviews and court records and testimony show the South Texas cases often involve one officer at a time pulled to the dark side by friends, family or associates offering quick cash.
Hale, 28, is to be released from prison in 2032.
He claims he was set up by fellow officer Pedro Martinez III, whom he knew since childhood. Martinez testified against Hale as part of a plea deal and got six years.
Martinez's father, who died in a suspicious suicide, was apparently a drug dealer who lured his son into the business.
Martinez drove his squad car to escort what he thought was 44 pounds of cocaine. The drugs were a sham. The dealers were federal agents and government informants running a sting.
Such tricks have worked repeatedly.
Pharr police officer Jaime Beas was busted for using his vehicle to escort a load of cocaine and for his involvement in a scheme to ship a grenade, semiautomatic rifles and body armor to Mexico.
Authorities went after Beas when he was turned in by an uncle in the military who said he repeatedly was approached about equipment.
ELSEWHERE IN TEXAS: Although she probably had an airtight alibi, actress Sofia Vergara made an appearance of sorts after agents from the FBI and DEA raided a used car lot and three different homes in the El Paso, TX area earlier this year.
Luxury watches, diamond jewelry, 20 vehicles, 30 firearms, framed "Scarface" pictures and an autographed nude photo of actress Sofia Vergara were among numerous items seized by federal agents as part of a drug cartel investigation.
Recent filings in U.S. District Court in El Paso detail a treasure-trove seized by FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents in a series of raids on used-car lots and homes in the El Paso area in February.
The wife and parents of defendant Alejandro Melendez are asking in documents that some of the goods be returned, claiming that they were bought years before any alleged criminal activity.While the authenticity of the signature of the Vergara photo wasn't immediately confirmed, the FBI and DEA claim that the Vergara fanboys were members of the Juarez cartel.
Melendez is accused of belonging to a marijuana and cocaine trafficking group linked to the Sinaloa drug cartel, federal agents said. Melendez is owner of Budget Auto Sales, one of three Alameda Avenue car lots raided in February by the FBI and DEA El Paso Strike Force.
Federal agents raided the Budget Auto Sales car lot and a $653,000 home in the 5500 block of Woodgreen Drive in the Upper Valley, documents stated. The home is listed in property tax records as belonging to Alejandro Melendez.
CHIHUAHUA: Four people, including two Americans were killed earlier this week when gunmen opened fire on an SUV in Juarez.
The four were riding in a blue Dodge Durango with Texas plates peppered with gunshots from assault rifles Friday evening on Eje Vial Juan Gabriel and Zaragoza boulevard, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said.
An official with the U.S. Consulate in Juárez confirmed two of the dead were U.S. citizens. They were identified as Pablo Noe Williams, 19, and his mother Rosa Williams, 35, and are listed as being from Kansas.
A spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said the young man was from El Paso. The other people killed were Alberto Nieto Nieto, 24, and Alma Yesenia Flores, 21.
NEW MEXICO: On the heels of the arrest of the mayor and police chief of the border village of Columbus, NM on weapons trafficking charges, two former law enforcement officers turned whistleblowers have claimed that the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety have ignored their findings on sweeping corruption in Southern New Mexico and the El Paso, TX area.
Two former law enforcement officers allege that they cannot get anyone to investigate allegations that the Mexican drug cartels have corrupted U.S. law officers and politicians in the El Paso border region.As a former livestock inspector andDutton also claimed that drug smugglers would often try to sneak contrabad into the USA from Mexico by using saddles and tack equipment.
Greg Gonzales, a retired Doña Ana County sheriff's deputy, and Wesley Dutton, a rancher and former New Mexico state livestock investigator, said that instead of arrests and prosecutions of suspects, their whistle-blowing activities have resulted only in threats and retaliation against themselves.
Both men were confidential sources for the FBI in El Paso and assisted with investigations over an 18-month period.
Gonzales and Dutton allege that the FBI dropped them after "big names" on the U.S. side of the border began to surface in the drug investigations.
Gonzales and Dutton said both or either one of them helped with federal investigations that were successful, including the arrest of Special FBI Agent John Shipley. Shipley was convicted of weapons-related charges after a weapon he sold someone turned up in Chihuahua state at a scene where a firefight took place between Mexican soldiers and drug traffickers.
However, they said, they are concerned that other serious allegations have not found their way to court.
"One of the street gangs that works for the Juárez cartel put a hit out on FBI Special Agent Samantha Mikeska, and I told the FBI as soon as I heard about it," Dutton said. "We also had information on campaign fundraisers and parties in La Union that the cartel held for officials from New Mexico and El Paso. A lot of important people were at those parties, such as bankers, judges, and law enforcement officers."
Mikeska is a high-profile agent whose investigations of the Barrio Azteca gang led to prosecutions of gang leaders. The gang, which has members in West Texas and New Mexico, is linked to the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel.
Gonzales said a U.S. law enforcement officer was suspected of selling to a street gang with Juárez drug cartel ties a list of U.S. Marshals that included their telephone numbers.
"With their number, the gang was able to 'clone' the agents' cell phones and intercept their calls," Gonzales said. "That way, they would know when one of the agents was trying to serve an arrest warrant against one of their members."
Dutton and Gonzales said small aircraft regularly drop drug loads on ranches or other properties along the U.S.-Mexico border, and that some U.S. law officers escort the loads to the next stop.
The two whistle-blowers said that drug cartels have managed to obtain computer access codes to U.S. surveillance systems that let them see where and when Border Patrol agents are monitoring the border.
They also alleged that drug cartels have given big donations to politicians, which are unreported, to influence appointments of key law enforcement officers.
NUEVO LEON: Police officers in a suburb of Monterrey repotedly allowed kidnap victims to be held in local jails while their abductors negotiated a ransom with their families, according to state prosecutors.
The scandal at the northern prison came to light this week when state and federal police freed two kidnapping victims from jail cells in Juarez. Investigators believe that the victims were abducted by the extremely violent Zetas cartel and that the officers were working for the Zetas, Domene said.
Four police officers from Juarez, a suburb of the city of Monterrey, are being held pending further investigation, said Jorge Domene, the security spokesman for Nuevo Leon state.
Local police in northern Mexico have often been bribed or threatened to work for drug gangs by providing them with information, protecting their activities or detaining and turning over members of rival gangs.
VERACRUZ: Police and Mexican Marines in the Gulf state of Veracruz have discovered an additional 32 bodies barely two weeks after gunmen halted traffic as they dumped 36 corpses in the middle of a busy highway during rush hour in what was apparently a gruesome and brazen challenge to the Zetas.
Just two days after the Mexican government unveiled a plan to lay down the law in the state of the same name, police and marines found the bodies in three separate areas of the city, the Navy said in a statement.While the bodies found this week in housing developments in Veracruz have yet tp be conclusively identified, officials say that most of the bodies dumped on the highway in Septmeber had been identified as having a criminal background and associated with Los Zetas.
The bodies were in homes around the port as the military conducted operations under the new "Safe Veracruz" program, the statement said. Twenty bodies were found in one house that was searched after a tip from naval intelligence.
ELSEWHERE IN VERACRUZ: A spokesman from Mexico's Navy said that Marines had arrested nine Zetas who had escaped from prison last month. During the raid, they came across detailed information documenting bribes paid out to at least 18 municipal police officers throughout the state.
MEXICO CITY: Two severed heads were found on a street adjacent to Mexico's defence ministry in Mexico City on Monday. A statement left at the scene suggested the gruesome display was from a fairly obscure organization known as 'Hands With Eyes', an offshoot of the Beltran Leya cartel.
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