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The best way to smuggle illegal contraband across the border is with well paid inside help from CBP agents. Jesse Clark Garcia and Diego Bonillo thought they had it made. Prosecutors say they weren’t even trying to hide their ill-gotten gains. “One had dropped thousands of dollars on luxury items from Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry.” The other “had taken multiple European vacations and was about to attend a pricey boxing match in Las Vegas.”
Border Protection agents
The cartels have relied on inside help getting all sorts of illicit things across the border for as long as there’s been restrictions on what comes across. Everyone has their price, for some, it’s low and easy terms can be arranged.
The feds aren’t saying which drug lord they were working for. Both agents were arrested earlier this year but the indictments were just unveiled.
Uncle Sam doesn’t pay enough for a a stake in a horse racing stable or a custom home, scenically situated on a Mexican ranch. Federal prosecutors say that cartel money paid for those things. All Garcia and Bonillo had to do for big bucks was “allow vehicles loaded with fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to pass unchecked through their inspection lanes at the Otay Mesa and Tecate ports of entry.”
When they tell the mule to use lane 2 at the border crossing and be there between 2 and 4 on Thursday, they have a real good reason.
On Tuesday, September 3, a search warrant affidavit was unsealed revealing previously unreported details. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego “did not announce the arrests or the indictment as it has in previous cases for law enforcement officers accused, convicted or sentenced for wrongdoing.”
They were waiting for a good time to distract everyone away from other news. The border agents “profited handsomely.”
Arrested in early May
The cartel pays well for the work. Court documents show the pair each earned “tens of thousands of dollars for each drug-laden vehicle they ushered into the U.S. without scrutiny.” They can’s say for sure how much came across the border, reporting only the figures for what they caught up with later.
“Garcia and Bonillo combined allowed more than 1,150 pounds of drugs into the U.S. on five occasions between April 2021 and February of this year. That total only accounts for the drugs that authorities later seized.”
Authorities swooped in and arrested both agents in early May. That was the conclusion to “an investigation led by the FBI San Diego field office’s Border Corruption Task Force.” A month later, they arrested “their former CBP colleague, Leonard Darnell George.”
He “went on trial in a similar but seemingly unrelated case.” He’s charged with “accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for allowing smugglers to bring drugs and undocumented migrants through his inspection lane at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.”
U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath issued a stern statement. “Corruption undermines the integrity of our border security and poses a grave threat to public safety.” The House tried to impeach Mayorkas for that but the Senate wouldn’t do the job and convict.
“Allegations that border officials are complicit in fentanyl trafficking are especially troubling. This office will bring those who put our community at risk to justice.“
