"The Enemy Within: Bribes Bore a Hole in the U.S. Border" by Ron Nixon New York Times December 29, 2016
WASHINGTON — A review by The New York Times of thousands of court records and internal agency documents showed that over the last 10 years almost 200 employees and contract workers of the Department of Homeland Security have taken nearly $15 million in bribes while being paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws.
These employees have looked the other way as tons of drugs and thousands of unauthorized immigrants were smuggled into the United States, the records show. They have illegally sold green cards and other immigration documents and have entered law enforcement databases and given sensitive information to drug cartels. In one case, the information was used to arrange the attempted murder of an informant.
The Times’ findings most likely undercount the amount of bribes because in many cases court records do not give a tally. The findings also do not include gifts, trips, or money stolen by Homeland Security employees.
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump said border security would be one of his highest priorities. As he prepares to take office, he will find that many of the problems seem to come from within.
“It does absolutely no good to talk about the building of walls or tougher enforcement if you can’t secure the integrity of the immigration system, when you have fraud and corruption with your own employees,” said an internal affairs official at the Department of Homeland Security who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Obama's border patrol.
As his administration fades into the past and and more becomes known about the neglect and corruption of his reign, it looks like the whole hulking thing was on auto-pilot as Obama watched Sportscenter!
Trump is the same as he was. It's all a BIG SHOW!!
Although Homeland Security employees who have been caught taking bribes represent less than 1 percent of the more than 250,000 people who work at the department, investigators say the bribes and small numbers of people arrested and charged with bribery obscure the impact corruption can have on border security and immigration enforcement.
“Any amount is bad, and one person alone can do a lot of damage,” said John Roth, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. “It doesn’t have to be widespread.”
Law enforcement experts say the bribing of border and immigration agents is not surprising. As border security has tightened with the addition of fences, drones and sensors, drug cartels and human smugglers have found it increasingly more difficult to operate.
And yet it is all still failing!
“So it makes sense that cartels would target and try to corrupt border interdiction agents,” said Fred Burton, chief security officer at Stratfor, a global intelligence company, and a former deputy chief of counterterrorism at the State Department. “It’s very similar to the tactics and tradecraft used by foreign intelligence services during the Cold War.”
OMG!
Now they are turning CIA drug and gun smuggling into Cold War espionage!
Puh-leeze!
Homeland Security officials, acknowledging that internal corruption is a problem, have hired more internal affairs investigators, provided ethics training and started to administer polygraph tests to new applicants, along with countersurveillance training to employees so they can recognize when they are being targeted by criminal organizations.
Customs and Border Protection, which has had dozens of its officers arrested and charged with bribery, said it had made additional changes to combat corruption. Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, in 2014 gave authority to the agency’s internal affairs office to conduct criminal investigations for the first time. And Mark Morgan, a former FBI agent who had investigated corruption on the border, was put in charge of the Border Patrol.
“Polygraphs have made it so we don’t hire people with significant problems,” said R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of the customs agency. “The bigger problem is what happens to people who are already on board. These changes address that.”
Records show that the bribing of Homeland Security employees persists. This year, 15 have been arrested on, convicted of, or sentenced on charges of bribery....
Now you migrants know the path to cro$$ to get here.
--more--"
I didn't see any mention of the Fast and Furious gun-running operation that armed the favored cartel and which led to the death of a border agent.
Related: Wikileaks Whisper
(I'm sure you can see why I'm keeping my voice down; it's all they ever gave us about you-know-who)
