By Andrew Becker

Many of the thousands of new border agents hired in recent years as part of a push to block drug traffickers and other safety threats from entering the country might actually pose security risks themselves, a Homeland Security official testified today.

Speaking at a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on corruption of federal law enforcement officers, James Tomsheck, the assistant commissioner for internal affairs at Customs and Border Protection, testified that drug-trafficking organizations have infiltrated the nation's largest federal law enforcement agency.

"There is a concerted effort on the part of transnational criminal organizations to infiltrate through hiring initiatives and to compromise our existing agents and officers," he said.

Despite efforts to combat corruption, which include lie-detector tests for applicants and background checks for new hires and veteran employees, Tomsheck said he worries that the problem may be too big for his agency and others to wipe out even when they work together harmoniously.

Since 2004, more than 100 CBP agents and officers have been arrested or indicted, officials said. Tomsheck said when he took over the internal affairs office in 2006 the vast majority of corrupted employees had worked with the agency for 10 years or more, but now an increasing number of younger agents and officers have become corrupted.

CBP has expanded rapidly in recent years, nearly doubling the number of Border Patrol agents to 20,000, which has pushed its ranks to about 58,000 employees.

Tomsheck, who appeared with top officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, said that his agency has a backlog of 10,000 regularly scheduled background investigations, which could almost double by the end of the year. Nearly 100 contractors, among them retired FBI, DEA and other federal agents who conduct the checks, were recently laid off because of budget woes.

Funding shortfalls have also limited polygraph examiners to administer lie-detector tests to 10 to 15 percent of applicants, Tomsheck said, although the goal is to test all potential hires. But 60 percent of those who take the test are deemed "unsuitable" to work as Border Patrol agents or customs inspectors, Tomsheck said.

When asked if the 60 percent failure rate could apply to the other 85-90 percent of possible hires who are not tested, Tomsheck said officials had reached that conclusion. They suspect that many of those hired during the hiring push would be found not suitable to work for CBP if subjected to the test, Tomsheck said.

Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who called the hearing and is the chair of the subcommittee, said the percentage is "alarming."

"We're on very dangerous ground here with corruption inside federal law enforcement," Pryor said.

Kevin Perkins, the assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division, did not give a specific number on how pervasive the problem is, but offered the case of customs inspector Margarita Crispin as an example of how valuable a corrupt official is to traffickers.

Agents suspect that Crispin joined CBP in 2003 with the intent of working with drug smugglers. She was sentenced in 2008 to 20 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $5 million in bribes she was paid to allow thousands of pounds of marijuana to be smuggled through her inspection lane in El Paso.

Based on the amount of bribe money Perkins said he seems the problem of corruption is "significantly pervasive." The FBI has expanded the number of its anti-corruption units, which draw from other state and federal agencies, to attack corruption, he said.

But corruption in the Homeland Security Department isn't limited to Border Patrol agents and customs inspectors. Agents and officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which both runs immigration detention and is Homeland Security's investigative arm, and employees of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that issues green cards and other immigration benefits, have also been corrupted.

Tom Frost, the assistant inspector general for investigations at DHS, said his office has even greater concern about the risk of corruption within CIS.

"Immigration benefits are such a valuable commodity to drug-trafficking organizations or other persons that would do us harm," he said. "Immigration benefits are even more lasting and profound" because they allow drug traffickers to operate within the United States.

Pryor said that changes in the law might address the problem.

“These cartels in Mexico are very powerful,” he said. “We should not underestimate their ability to corrupt law enforcement authorities.”

On the heels of several reports documenting U.S. citizens who have been detained or even deported by federal immigration officers, a top Homeland Security Department official in November issued a memo that aims to guide his agency on what to do when a person suspected of being illegally in the country claims to be a citizen.

(The memo can be seen here.)

John Morton, Homeland Security's assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sent the memo, which instructs ICE employees that "In all cases, any uncertainty about whether the evidence is probative of U.S. Citizenship should weigh against detention."

(The memo supersedes a memo from November 2008, which superseded another memo from July 2008, which superseded a memo from May 2008.)

Aside from going deeper into the issue than previous guidance, the other differences are who issued the memo and to whom it's addressed.

The memos from November and July 2008 were issued by James T. Hayes Jr., the then-director of ICE's Office of Detention and Removal Operations, and sent to DRO's field office directors.

Morton's note didn't just go to the deportation officers and enforcement agents assigned to DRO. The recipients include special agents (through the 26 special agents in charge) and ICE attorneys (through the 26 chief counsels' offices). With it comes a sense of urgency and prioritization of such citizenship claims.

Morton's directive also instructs agents and officers to work with the local U.S. attorney's office to prosecute a person who lies about their citizenship claim.

(The government has shown its serious about prosecuting false claims, including asylum seekers.)

That the memo comes from Morton gives extra heft, and follows various media reports highlighting the issue.

CIR, in separate collaborations with the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones, reported that numerous detainees with valid or possible claims to U.S. citizenship have been detained and even deported in recent years. (Other reporting on the issue can be found here, here and here.)

ICE's new "Secure Communities" program that targets criminal aliens for deportation has also mistakenly identified thousands of U.S. citizens initially believed to be potentially subject to deportation.

More details on how ICE determines citizenship could become public through a lawsuit filed by one such U.S. citizen detained for seven months.

Vern Castillo, a native of Belize, became a naturalized U.S. citizen while he was in the U.S. Army. A few years after Castillo was honorably discharged from the military he ended up serving a short jail sentence following a domestic dispute with a girlfriend.

Instead of being released once his jail time was up, Castillo was detained by immigration officials who thought he was in the country illegally. An immigration judge didn't believe Castillo's protests that he was a citizen, and ordered the man deported. It was only after an appeals panel reviewed the case that immigration officials realized a mistake had been made in his file, and he was released.

Castillo filed suit in November 2008 against the agents. A federal judge in Tacoma recently ruled the case could move forward in part. The U.S. government has appealed that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Settlement discussions are ongoing.

According to court records, Castillo (or his legal team) wants a lesson in how ICE agents and officers go about their business of determining whether someone in their custody is a U.S. citizen or not. They want to videotape a qualified operator showing them how database searches are conducted.

Among the things that could come to light are the policies, procedures and practices in determining, documenting and investigating citizenship and claims of citizenship. Castillo also wants to see the agency's logs, training materials and manuals on the topic, court records show.

An ongoing drug trial in U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, provides an uncommon glimpse into the violent battle for Juarez, just across the U.S.-Mexico border. The trial has had as many twists and turns as the Rio Grande, which splits these New Wild West towns into something like Heaven and Hell.

For more than a week in El Paso, witnesses have taken the stand and testified about the world of Mexican drug traffickers. The El Paso Times has reported that their testimony has flashed light on the players and strategies in a vicious turf fight between rival traffickers vying for control of the lucrative smuggling corridor.

The testimony has also skimmed the murkiness of drug enforcement on both sides of the border. At least one witness and even the main defendant have been outed as sources for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who were later arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration for running drugs.

The testimony comes in the trial of two accused drug smugglers, Fernando Ontiveros-Arámbula, whom an ICE agent today said was an informant for the agency, and Manuel Chávez-Betancourt, who refused to cooperate with the government out of fear for his family's safety, according to court records. (For safety concerns, the federal judge, David Briones, ordered that jurors have lunch brought in to them each day.) Witnesses have testified that Ontiveros-Aråmbula worked directly under Mexico's most wanted drug trafficker, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who leads the Sinaloa drug syndicate, the El Paso Times reports.

The trial has a motley array of characters, from a rooster breeder who stored caches of marijuana in his New Mexico barn to a female trafficker who allegedly survived being shot 15 times to a former Juarez police captain who said all law enforcement in the city and elsewhere in the Mexican state of Chihuahua are on the take, including himself. Among them are several witnesses who have also been indicted or convicted of drug smuggling charges in El Paso and elsewhere and were flipped by the U.S. government to testify against the smugglers.

Among the more intriguing witnesses so far is the former Juarez police captain. Jesus Fierro-Mendez was a 10-year police veteran who ran a counter-narcotics unit, the EPT reports. He left the police department in April 2007 under suspicious circumstances, sources say. Federal agents arrested him at his El Paso home in Oct. 2008. He was sentenced in January to 27 years in prison by a federal judge in Indianapolis.

A quick aside: this former police captain got 324 months for smuggling cocaine into the United States. Most U.S. law enforcement busted for corruption typically get far less prison time. A Pennsylvania Congressman, however, introduced last month a bill that includes stiffer penalties for agents who accept bribes. By comparison, Osiel Cardenas, the notorious former head of the Gulf Cartel, was recently sentenced to 25 years after pleading guilty to drug dealing, money laundering and the attempted murder and assault of federal agents, according to news reports.

The counter-narcotics unit, known as Puma, consisted of young officers fresh out of the police academy who were supposed to be incorruptible, sources say. Little did the rookie cops apparently know that their boss was himself involved in the drug trade.

But Fierro-Mendez's testimony comes with a twist — he was also an ICE informant who, he said, was authorized by the infamous "El Chapo" of the Sinaloa gang to give U.S. law enforcement information about the rival Juarez cartel.

ICE agents in El Paso have walked down this path before, and not just with today's news that the defendant was passing information to the U.S. at the same time he was trying to pass loads of drugs. A law enforcement source said it is not uncommon for traffickers to offer information about competitors.

Another ICE informant was implicated in at least a dozen murders in Juarez around 2003. That informant, Guillermo Ramirez-Peyro, known as Lalo, awaits his fate in an immigration detention center in New York.

Last May, a high-ranking member of the Juarez cartel, who was also an ICE informant, was gunned down outside of his El Paso home. Among the hitmen was another member of the Juarez cartel who was also, allegedly, an ICE informant.

After federal prosecutors rested their case today, defense attorney began their questioning. Explosions expected to follow.

Almost a half-million people have sought refuge from the drug violence racking the Mexican border metropolis of Juarez, according to a newspaper estimate.

The El Paso Times reported this week that the city of Juarez's planning department have found that 110,000 houses have been abandoned from 2005 to the beginning of 2009.

The paper extrapolates that "based on average family size, about 420,000 people, or 30 percent of the city's residents, have moved out of Juárez, either to other parts of Mexico or to the United States."

Although numbers may be squishy, the paper said local police, real estate agents and demographers "detect an increase in refugees from Mexico living in El Paso."

Some of the "refugees" could be tied to the economy as about 75,000 people have lost their jobs since Dec. 2007, the paper reports. The maquiladora industry, which manufactures or assembles products for international distribution, shed most of those positions.

But another extraordinary statistic the paper reports is that more than 10,000 businesses — about 40 percent of the city's total — have closed out of fear of extortion and assault, according to the Mexican chamber of commerce.

CIR, reporting for The Nation, wrote last year that "Officials on both sides of the border acknowledge these new immigrants but decline to make estimates of how many have fled."

What's interesting about the El Paso Times story is the effort to go beyond the local body count — more than 4,600 killed since 2008 — to quantify the economic and social damage that the violence has had in Juarez.

While the U.S. has pledged $1.4 billion in aid to Mexico and Central American countries to combat the drug trade, there has been little public discussion between the U.S. and Mexico about the social fallout from the related violence, and possible refugees from the drug war.

Elsewhere in Texas, the former head of the infamous Gulf cartel was sentenced behind closed doors in Houston to 25 years in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $50 million, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Here is the press release from the U.S. attorney's office.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last fall held an "Industry Day" on detention reform as a way to get feedback from current and potential contractors and other interested parties. The event was closed to the news media.

ICE provided to the Center for Investigative Reporting a list of the companies represented, but would not disclose who the attendees were. The event was held at the Julie Myers Conference room at ICE headquarters.

The companies in attendance range from builders to current jailers to the Royal Bank of Canada. Several already have detention-related contracts or are staffed with former ICE or the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials.

Here's the list of the companies, as provided by ICE (with light editing):
1. K4 Solutions, Inc. (past DHS contractors)
2. McConnell International, LLC (an executive was formerly with INS.)
3. The Dozoretz Group, LLC (Nina Dozoretz, formerly with the Division of Immigration Health Service; recently returned to the government to work with ICE on detainee health care.)
4. PSA-Dewberry, Inc. (architects)
5. Proteus On Demand Facilities (builders)
6. Kelly, Anderson & Associates (The company has several former high-ranking Homeland Security officials on its staff, including a former chief of the Border Patrol.)
7. Arc Aspicio, LLC
8. Stanley Associates
9. Pike County Corrections Facility (currently holds detainees)
10. Pike County Commissioners Office
11. Northrop Grumman Corporation
12. Worchester County Jail (currently holds detainees)
13. LCS Corrections (ICE contractor)
14. CACI, Inc. (ICE contractor)
15. Emerald Companies (ICE contractor)
16. Nortel Government Solutions (DHS contractor)
17. Youth Services International
18. Capgemini Government Solutions (DHS contractor)
19. USIS (DHS contractor, background investigations)
20. MGT of America (ICE contractor)
21. The CMC Group (builders)
22. Ernst & Young
23. KeyPoint Government Solutions (Former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on board of directors, DHS contractors)
24. The Forest Group, Inc.
25. Community Education Centers, Inc.
26. CCA (ICE contractor)
27. Unique Comp Inc. (CBP contractor)
28. Office of Federal Detention Trustee
29. Management & Training Corporation (ICE contractor)
30. Strategic Business Alliance
31. Health Insurance LLC
32. JJ DeLuca Company, Inc. (construction)
33. NetStar 1 (ICE/DHS contractor, data management)
34. GEO Group (ICE contractor)
35. Global Integrated Security
36. iSECUREtrac
37. Oldcastle Precast Modular & Security (builder)
38. Sundt Construction
39. KIMBALL furniture
40. Royal Bank of Canada
41. Frederick County Adult Detention (ICE contractor)
42. Argyle Corrections Group
43. ManTech (DHS contractor)
44. GEO Transportation (ICE contractor)
45. Volunteers of America
46. Price Waterhouse Coopers (DHS contractor)
47. Correctional Eye Care Services
48. STG International (DIHS contractor)
49. Dun & Bradstreet Gov. Solutions
50. Cornell Companies (ICE contractor)
51. Loredo Lomas Properties (real estate)
52. IBM
53. RTR Technologies engineering
54. Immigration Centers of America (ICE contractor)
55. Nabholtz Construction Corporation
56. Accenture (DHS contractor)

While immigration reform advocates wait for Congress to fix the nation's broken immigration system, the Department of Homeland Security says it’s committed to its pledge to overhaul immigration detention.

But the department needs help. And officials are looking for ideas. The agencies that run immigration detention and detainee health care are turning, in some cases, to the same people, consultants and companies that have been advising or working with those agencies for years.

For example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the department’s investigative arm and jailers to some 30,000 immigrant detainees on any given day, in the fall hosted an “Industry Day” event, where agency officials outlined to an audience of mostly government contractors their plans and goals to re-make detention.

ICE officials told attendees that reform is badly needed, and acknowledged shortcomings, some of which have been outlined in a report issued by DHS in early October.

The thrust of the three-hour gathering — which attracted representatives from nearly 60 companies, consultants and detention watchers but was closed to news media — was “to begin a dialogue with current or prospective detention service providers for the purpose of sharing the basic premises of our reform efforts, secure feedback and begin to expand our market research,” according to the event posting on the government contracting Web site FedBizOpps.gov.

Attendees included various former immigration officials now in the private sector, defense contractors, the Royal Bank of Canada, IBM and a host of efficiency experts, builders and other consultants, including a company that has former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff on its board of directors.

"This is a pivotal moment right now in terms of immigration, in terms of detention reform," said attendee Nina Dozoretz who until recently ran a health-care related consulting firm. "I’m optimistic – there's a big commitment from ICE to move this forward."

Dozoretz retired in August 2004 as the associate director of the Division of Immigration Health Services after spending 20 years as a public health service official.

In November — shortly after the event and days after she spoke to CIR — Dozoretz returned to ICE to oversee the health-care overhaul for the Office of Detention and Removal Operations. She said that the reform efforts were what brought her back to ICE.

Dozoretz, who also worked as vice president for the detention monitor and ICE contractor Nakamoto Group, recently appeared in a New York Times article on the issue of detainee deaths.

Homeland Security Department officials have outlined the intended overhaul, including more oversight, centralizing contracts and a custody classification system. The pledged reforms are part of a shift from a broad-based, one-size-fits-all, lock-up system toward a more civil approach.

Mike Magee, a Homeland Security consultant who formerly ran ICE’s criminal alien program for state and local prisons and jails, said civil detention is a good idea, but will be difficult to implement.

The goal is to spend wiser and use alternatives to detention, such as ankle-bracelet monitors when detention isn’t appropriate or necessary.

On Monday, John Morton, the assistant secretary for ICE, spoke about the ongoing reform effort, including a forthcoming detainee locator system, at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

But the big money – and big challenges – remain in detaining immigrants, attendees say. ICE has signed several new contracts to build or expand immigration detention facilities in the past year. The agency’s push to track down more immigrants with criminal charges or convictions may also increase the need for detention bed space. Known as Secure Communities, the ICE program helps local law enforcement agencies screen people in custody for their immigration status.

In a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, GEO Group Inc., one of the government’s biggest contractors for immigration detention, pointed toward anticipated growth of federal detention, particularly immigrants. That means more money. From GEO's third-quarter report:

"We believe ICE will continue to emphasize the detention and removal of criminal aliens throughout the country. ICE has been allocated approximately $1.4 billion for this purpose. We believe that this federal initiative to target, detain, and deport criminal aliens throughout the country will continue to drive the need for immigration detention beds over the next several years."

For years, ICE has said that deporting criminal aliens has been its top priority, but in practice immigration agents New York Times grabbed whomever they could. This new Secure Communities program claims to re-focus its priority.

ICE has plans to roll out the program across the country by 2013, making its database available to every law enforcement agency nationwide. In the first year of its existence, ICE identified more than 111,000 criminal immigrants in 11 states.

But there’s no more money in this year’s budget for major reform, attendees were told. Senior agency officials, among them Phyllis Coven, the director of the Office of Detention Planning and Policy, and David Venturella, the director of Detention and Removal Operations, intimated that ICE will request proposals to build new detention facilities.

Plans were announced for a 2,200-bed “low-custody” detention facility in Los Angeles, but the date to submit proposals has been delayed more than a month.

“I believe these people are all very sincere and have good intentions,” said Peter Michel, CEO of iSECUREtrac, a Nebraska-based company that provides ankle-monitoring technology. “It sounds like they have a pretty big mountain to climb.”

Who is Tracey Bardorf?

John Morton, the assistant secretary for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, last summer brought on the relatively young former federal prosecutor to be his special adviser for Mexico and border matters.

Before joining ICE, Bardorf oversaw the Justice Department’s Mérida Initiative projects and implementation of the Global Trafficking in Persons program, according to her ICE Web site bio.

Now 10 years out of law school — she graduated from Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law in 2000 — including a few years of corporate litigation before she joined the government, she now, presumably, has the country's top immigration and customs enforcement official’s ear. Or not.

She spent about four years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Arizona, where she handled firearms, immigration, trafficking in persons and violent crime prosecutions, according to her bio. A search of a federal courts database shows she was involved in about 400 cases before she was detailed to Mexico as the Department of Justice resident legal adviser in Mexico City.

Among her notable cases were convictions of child sex traffickers in 2008, a 2007 guilty plea from a Mexican national on aggravated identity theft and illegally re-entering the country after deportation and separate 2006 convictions of coyotes whose misguided border crossings resulted in the deaths of illegal immigrants.

In recent months, Bardorf, 35, has popped up on an American Bar Association panel in Washington D.C. in November, speaking about narco-violence along the border and emerging national security law issues, and then again late last year for a meeting between Mexican and U.S. officials in Mexico City.

Other than that, there isn't a lot of reliable information about her. So, who is Tracey Bardorf?

Bardorf is a Republican and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. She sat on — and eventually was voted chairwoman of — Arizona’s Clean Elections panel, which monitors the state’s system for public financing of candidates, according to the commission's 2005 annual report. (She resigned in 2006 after serving two years of a five-year term when the Justice Department raised a conflict of interest objection, according to a news report.)

She is a graduate of St. Anselm College, a Catholic liberal arts college in New Hampshire, and she attended Phillips Exeter Academy. She is fluent in Spanish, German and French, and is proficient in Italian, according to the annual report.

Other than that, based on an unscientific, informal, quick survey of a handful of people, not much else is known about her. Some people had heard of her. Others hadn’t.

As far as her efforts with the $1.4 billion anti-narcotics aid package dubbed the Mérida Initiative, which has drawn criticism for being Mexico’s version of Plan Colombia and because of alleged human rights abuses by the Mexican military, there isn’t much public information.

(For more information on Mérida, see the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute).

A Government Accountability Office report released in December found that the release of funds for the Mérida Initiative was dragging, but that “a broad range of training, exchange, and technical assistance programs have been completed or initiated with the aim of strengthening the capacity of law enforcement and justice sector institutions.”

How much of that relates to the Justice Department or even Bardorf's involvement? Good question.

A Congressional Research Service report last year states that “many predict that it is likely to take much longer than three years for Mérida to help partner governments make real headway in achieving that goal" but U.S. officials "maintain that some of the most important results of Mérida thus far may be impossible to quantify, such as the increase in communication and cooperation that has developed as a result of the Initiative among U.S., Mexican, and Central American law enforcement and security officials."

Maybe that's where Bardorf comes in. But how she became one of Morton's top advisers is a question that remains unanswered. Any ideas? abecker (at) cironline (dot) org

A Justice Department investigation of an immigration judge's misconduct in Florida gives a Bahamian asylum seeker another day in court.

The National Law Journal reports that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility found that Bruce Solow, an immigration judge in Miami, "engaged in professional misconduct when he acted in reckless disregard of his obligation to be fair and impartial."

In a 2005 asylum hearing Solow mocked Roscoe Campbell, who said he fled his native Bahamas for fear for his life after reporting to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration corrupt officials engaging in drug-trafficking, according to the article. Solow ordered Campbell and his family deported.

The federal appellate courts have excoriated some immigration judges for their conduct, including Anna Ho, a Los Angeles-based immigration judge.

The fact that the Justice Department's internal affairs office took a look at the judge's behavior is extraordinary, Nadine Wettstein of the American Immigration Legal Council, told the legal newspaper.

Still, there isn't a lot known about the larger issue of judicial misconduct and how the court leadership - and, by extension, the Justice Department - handles complaints. The NLJ writes:

The lack of transparency irritates attorneys and judges alike. The American Immigration Council's Wettstein and other immigration lawyers said complaints against immigration judges to the Executive Office seem to go into a "black hole," and, they added, getting notice of findings made by OPR also seems rare.

Immigration attorneys have also been reluctant, in some cases, to file complaints against certain judges because they may have to argue before the judge again.

As the NLJ article points out, the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration court system, has its own procedure for taking complaints against immigration judges and private attorneys.

The agency would not release information on the number of complaints received nor would it make public its disciplinary actions, citing privacy concerns, according to the story.

The story also makes the point that the Justice Department's process for investigating complaints against immigration judges is "neither swift nor transparent and because of that, it can be unfair -- to aliens, attorneys and immigration judges."

We're interested in learning more about the immigration courts. If you have ideas to share, please contact abecker (at) cironline (dot) org.

The government will generally no longer detain asylum seekers who arrive at U.S. border crossings, airports and other entry points who have a credible fear of persecution or torture in their home country as long as they meet certain requirements, immigration officials announced today.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Homeland Security Department's investigative arm and the agency responsible for immigration detention, will put the policy into place starting Jan. 4, according to an ICE press release.

ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton said in a statement that the new policy, which changes the agency's stance on locking up people who ask for protection when they arrive at border crossings, is part of ongoing efforts to reform immigration detention.

“These new parole procedures for asylum seekers will help ICE focus both on protecting against major threats to public safety and implementing common-sense detention policies,” he said.

The new guidelines give the government authority to allow asylum seekers who have not been formally allowed into the country to remain out of immigration jail if they meet requirements determined by an asylum officer or an immigration judge. Normally foreign nationals who seek entrance into the United States but are without a visa or other valid travel documents are not permitted into the country.

CIR previously reported with the Los Angeles Times on the detention of Mexican asylum seekers, including police officers, who fled the country because they were afraid for their lives.

Arriving asylum seekers must establish their identity and show that they are not a danger to the country or a flight risk, and have a "credible" or valid fear of persecution or torture, as determined by an asylum officer or an immigration jduge. Such refugees must show that they are also eligible for asylum to be considered for release. The parole out of detention doesn't automatically mean that the asylum seeker will be granted protection.

The new policy also instructs ICE agents to report monthly on parole rates and decision-making in order to ensure that paroled asylum seekers are complying with requirements.

Foreign nationals who are already legally in the country when they ask for asylum are typically not subject to detention.

Corruption-related investigations of federal immigration and border agents in the Southwest has increased for the third year in a row, according to records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting through a Freedom of Information Act request.

More than 80 investigations were opened last year by the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General in the four Southwest border states against employees of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agencies that police the border and immigration.

The Inspector General, which is the lead Homeland Security agency to investigate criminal corruption cases, had more than 170 open cases, some dating to 2003, at the end of last fiscal year. That figure does not include cases being investigated by the FBI or the internal affairs offices of CBP or ICE.

CBP has significantly increased its ranks in recent years, while also hiring more internal affairs agents to combat the threat of corruption.

The latest case of an allegedly corrupt customs inspector was announced yesterday by federal officials in El Paso. Martha Alicia Garnica, 43, was arrested and indicted on charges of conspiracy to smuggle undocumented aliens, two counts of bribery and one count of importation of a controlled substance, according to a press release.

CBP spokesman Roger Maier said in an email statement that Garnica was hired as customs inspector in February 1997 and became a CBP officer when DHS formed in 2003. Since March 2008 she had been a technician assigned to the El Paso border crossing.

"Corruption is an issue CBP takes extremely seriously," Maier said. "Corruption by employees tarnishes our badge and our reputation, brings dishonor to our service and most importantly jeopardizes our border security."

An El Paso police spokesman said an officer by the same name worked for the department from 1990 to 1997, but could not confirm it was the same person.

November has been a busy time for corruption cases. Two CBP officers have been sentenced, two more will be sentenced later this month, and another this weekpleaded guilty to charges .

In South Texas, Raul Montano, 34, pleaded guilty Monday to bribery, cocaine trafficking and illegal immigrant smuggling charges. The former CBP officer will be sentenced in February.

Earlier this month, Sergio Lopez Hernandez, a 41-year-old former CBP officer, was sentenced in Federal District Court to more than 11 years in prison for human smuggling, bribery and cocaine possession. The former officer, who worked in Brownsville, Texas, admitted to taking more than $15,000 in bribes when he pleaded guilty in April.

In San Diego, John Paul Yanez-Camacho, a former CBP officer at the Otay Mesa border crossing, was sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access to a government computer.

From January 2005 through November 2006 Yanez-Camacho accessed a government database containing confidential information more than 250 times to check on the status of himself, family members, and drug traffickers who he knew from a previous job he held at Tequila Frogs restaurant in Juarez, Mexico, according to court documents. Yanez-Camacho was hired in 2003 by the federal government.

Jesus Velasco Esparza, a former CBP officer at the Calexico, Calif., border crossing, will be sentenced for corruption-related charges next week.

Update:
Velasco Esparza's sentencing has been postponed until next year.

Also, CBP Officer Henry Gauani, 41, of Yuma, Ariz., and his wife were sentenced Nov. 23 to a little more than three years in prison on bribery and drug trafficking charges. They were arrested in January and pleaded guilty in June.

Raquel Esquivel, a Border Patrol agent in Texas who was convicted in April by a federal jury of drug-trafficking charges, will be sentenced today.

All told, the Inspector General opened in fiscal year 2009 more than 400 investigations in the four Southwest border states, ranging from misconduct to criminal corruption cases. That number represents the most investigations in any year since the advent of the department in 2003. Overall, the Inspector General has 725 open investigations.

Other recent cases:
• Yamilkar Fierros, a former Border Patrol agent in Arizona, was arrested Oct. 30 and indicted on charges of accepting bribes.

• Former CBP Officer Rudy Trace Soliz III, 43, of Brownsville, was arrested Oct. 29 and charged with human smuggling

• Elliott R. Hernandez, 44, of Houston, a Citizenship and Immigration Services officer was arrested Oct. 22 on charges of bribery, fraud in connection with a computer and receiving something of value in exchange for performing an official act to which he is not entitled.

• Former CBP Officer Jose Carmelo Magana, 46, of Yuma, Arizona, pleaded guilty on Oct. 21 of charges of bribery and human smuggling. He will be sentenced in January.

• Retired CBP Officer Tony Alan Barker, 58, of Sahuarita, Ariz., was detained Oct. 7 on child pornography charges. Barker, a retired Customs and Border Protection officer of 35 years out of Georgia, was indicted in September 2009 by a federal grand jury in Tucson for Attempted Distribution of Child Pornography and Possession of Child Pornography.

• Former CBP Officer Javier Cavazos, 50, of Los Fresnos, Texas, was arrested on Sept. 29 and charged with bribery in connection with human smuggling.