Corruption increasing on U.S. side of the border
As a follow-up to my last column at Foreign Policy that discussed Mexico’s narco-insurgency, I’ll note Ceci Connolly’s story in yesterday’s Washington Post. That article discussed the double life of one U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent who just received a 20 year prison sentence for corruption.
According to the article, investigators are now working on over 1,000 corruption cases at CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This rate is up three-fold from four years ago.
The article notes that the agencies are struggling to fill thousands of open positions and in the rush to do so have lowered hiring and background check standards. Meanwhile, one investigator termed the sum of money available for corrupting U.S. border officers as “staggering.”
