色情视频

Catch-22: Stricter Border Enforcement May Increase Agent Corruption

Analysis of corruption cases among customs officers and Border Patrol agents reveals alarming trends depending on their years of service.

Monday, October 7, 2019
色情视频 sociologist David Jancsics focuses on corruption research..
色情视频 sociologist David Jancsics focuses on corruption research..
鈥淲e have no idea of the actual extent of corruption, because this is just from the reported cases.鈥

When a customs officer in El Paso, Texas, was arrested for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana into the U.S between 2003 and 2007, investigators found she had sought a job with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency mainly to enable the smuggling operation. 
This is but one example of how drug cartels infiltrate the agency. The estimated retail value of the drugs this one officer smuggled in over four years was around $288 million. Investigators also found that in the eight years between 2006 and 2014, roughly 30 job applicants admitted in their polygraph test that they were sent by Mexican cartels to seek employment with the agency. 

These incidents support findings from a study by David Jancsics, a 色情视频 sociologist, who found the total years of service agents had was the strongest predictor of different types of corruption on the border. If they were early career, they were more prone to trafficking drugs or weapons. If they were veterans, they were more prone to immigration corruption 鈥 bringing in illegal immigrants. 
鈥淥ne of the main implications of the study is that strict border enforcement may even increase corruption,鈥 said Jancsics, assistant professor at 色情视频 Imperial Valley with a joint appointment in 色情视频鈥檚 School of Public Affairs. 鈥淥rganized crime groups will actively target federal border law enforcement to assist with their illicit transport, since bribing agents is less risky than being caught by random inspections.鈥
Using documents obtained by investigative journalists with the Center for Investigative Reporting and The Texas Tribune through Freedom of Information Act requests,  Jancsics analyzed data from cases where customs officers and Border Patrol agents had been arrested, charged and convicted for corruption between October 2004 and October 2015.
The , published in Security Journal, is the result of two years of research and a detailed review of 160 cases.    

Jancsics has been  since 2009, but began to focus on border corruption after NATO invited him in 2015 to present at a conference in Ukraine about border corruption. He found there were not many sources of academic literature on the subject, aside from how it relates to trade, tariffs, and taxes. He decided to focus on what happens when CBP agents are bribed by different groups. 

In 2017, he began retrospective analysis of the data the journalists had obtained from the CBP, which was drawn from court documents, plea arguments, attorney letters, affidavits, sentencing memos, FBI reports, agent reports, press releases and other types of official documents. Undergraduate student Moises Cardenas helped him clean up the data. 
A majority of the cases he studied, 71%, were from the southern border, and the rest were from the northern border as well as airports throughout the country that serve as entry points. Three states accounted for nearly 70% of the cases - Texas had the most number of cases in this data set, at 51, followed by California at 30 and Arizona at 25 cases.   Using decision tree analysis to separate data into homogenous groups, Jancsics found 56% of officers with less than five years of service, especially from the south, were involved in drug trafficking, compared with 27% of veteran officers. 
For immigration corruption, it was the reverse 鈥 40% of veteran officers were involved in human smuggling compared with 25% of early career officers.

These findings have deeper policy implications as it relates to the hiring of agents. 
鈥淲e have no idea of the actual extent of corruption, because this is just from the reported cases,鈥 Jancsics said. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 only the tip of the iceberg.鈥    

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