Southwest Border: Corrupt Officials
On the Southwest Border
Corrupt Officials
08/09/10
| Assistant Director Perkins |
Corrupt officials who enrich themselves by allowing drugs or humans to be smuggled across the border are a serious problem. “What may be more dangerous—and what we have actually seen—are individuals who apply and are hired for official positions and from the outset are taking orders from drug trafficking organizations,” said Kevin Perkins, assistant director of our Criminal Investigative Division.
“These people are being paid millions of dollars by the cartels to be hired by CBP as uniformed officers at checkpoints,“ Perkins said, “so that the drug trafficking organizations know the shift schedule, know what lane to be in, know who’s working where.”
Such a situation, he noted, “is incredibly dangerous, because you don’t know what’s coming through the border. It could be narcotics, it could be illegal aliens, or it could be terrorists with some type of weapon of mass destruction. So in addition to the criminal implications, public corruption along the border has vast national security ramifications.”