FBI Explains Its Role In Combating Border Corruption

To hear proponents of Arizona’s new anti-immigration law tell it, the federal government is doing nothing to stop undocumented individuals from entering the U.S. in violation of the law. The FBI is telling us today that it is taking a role in the immigration battle – one that involves its efforts to combat border corruption.

As the FBI explains, “[i]magine a U.S. border guard on the take waving through a truck filled with weapons, drugs, explosives, or even a dirty bomb.”
 
It’s that kind of scenario that keeps the FBI focused on weeding out the occasional dishonest government official who accepts bribes to allow people or contraband into this country illegally.
 
“Because of its impact on national security, crookedness at our borders is one of the top priorities in our public corruption program,” according to FBI Special Agent Keith Byers, a public corruption supervisor in the FBI’s Chicago office. “While it’s true that the most common acts of border corruption involve drug trafficking and human smuggling, a single incident of the wrong person getting into the country could result in a catastrophe.”
 
According to the FBI, there are other possibilities of what could go wrong:
 
§ A corrupt officer might believe that he or she is accepting a bribe in return for allowing a carload of illegal immigrants to enter the country, when those individuals may actually be hard-core gang members or terrorists.
§ A crooked official who expedites someone’s immigration paperwork or helps someone obtain an identification document in return for a bribe could potentially be facilitating the operation of a terrorist cell, foreign counterintelligence network, or major criminal enterprise.
§ A corrupt officer could knowingly or unknowingly allow entry of a truck, rail car, ship, or airplane carrying weapons of mass destruction, chemical or biological weapons, or bomb-making materials.
 
FBI-led Border Corruption Task Forces seek to root out this kind of corruption. Initially located primarily along the country’s southwest border, there now are task forces in Detroit, Miami, and San Juan, and they are being set up in Buffalo, Newark, and Seattle. These task forces generally consist of representatives from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security agencies (including Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs, Transportation Security Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Department of Homeland Security—Office of Inspector General), and state and local law enforcement.
 
The FBI also has just created a National Border Corruption Task Force. Its role is to coordinate the activities of these regional task forces, especially in the areas of investigations, training, and inter-agency cooperation. 
 
The FBI says that it has been able to uncover corrupt acts of federal agents, local police, correctional officers, military personnel, and even U.S. government employees responsible for issuing passports, visas, green cards, etc. In many instances, the FBI has used sophisticated techniques including undercover operations and court-authorized electronic surveillance.