SAN DIEGO — According to prosecutors, two U.S. border inspectors in Southern California took thousands of dollars in bribes to let people enter the country without papers through the busiest port in the country.
Farlis Almonte and Ricardo Rodriguez are U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers who worked at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in immigration screening booths. A criminal complaint that was made public Thursday says that they were charged after agents found text messages between them and human traffickers in Mexico on their phones and found cash deposits into their bank accounts that they couldn’t explain.
Prosecutors said that surveillance video showed at least one time when a car with a driver and a passenger stopped at a checkpoint, but only the driver was tracked as having entered the country.
Prosecutors said the cops waved off dozens of cars carrying people who didn’t have papers. They said that each car the two men waved through earned them a lot of money.
It wasn’t clear right away if Almonte has a lawyer who can talk for him. The National Border Patrol Council, which is the union for Border Patrol agents, didn’t answer an email right away asking for comment.
Rodriguez’s lawyer, Michael Hawkins, said that the case was still in its “infant stages” and that Rodriguez is thought to be innocent.
Hawkins wrote in an email, “We look forward to working through the current situation.” He also said that Rodriguez was loyal and worked hard.
Three people who were caught smuggling migrants last year told federal investigators that they had been working with border agents, which is how the investigation into Almonte and Rodriguez began.
Investigators are said to have taken nearly $70,000 in cash from Almonte while he was in jail because they think his girlfriend was trying to move to Tijuana. The San Diego Union Tribune reported that prosecutors wrote in a court document that Almonte could face more charges for money laundering and obstructing justice.
“Any Customs and Border Protection agent who helps smugglers bring undocumented immigrants into the U.S. or turns a blind eye to them is breaking their oath and putting our national security at risk,” Acting U.S. Attorney Andrew Haden told the newspaper in a statement.
This kind of cheating charges have been brought against five U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in the San Diego area in the last two years.
Last year, Leonard Darnell George, a former U.S. border inspector, got 23 years in jail for taking bribes to let people and cars full of drugs into the country through the San Ysidro border crossing. Last year, the same charges were brought against two other former border agents who worked at the Otay Mesa and Tecate ports of entry. They are likely to be put on trial this summer.
