16 ex-GIs, police officials held in border drug sting
LOS ANGELES – Sixteen current and former U.S. soldiers and law enforcement officers have agreed to admit taking $222,000 in bribes from FBI agents posing as drug traffickers to help deliver cocaine shipments through government checkpoints along the Arizona-Mexico border, authorities said Thursday.
The defendants included a former Immigration and Naturalization Service inspector, a former Army sergeant, a Nogales, Ariz., police officer, a former federal prison guard, several Arizona state prison guards, and current and former Arizona National Guard soldiers. They escorted at least two drug shipments to Phoenix, Las Vegas and other southwestern destinations. When confronted by state and federal authorities, they flashed their government badges to keep the vehicles from being searched, Justice Department officials said.
One suspect, former INS inspector John Castillo, 30, was on duty at a border checkpoint in Nogales, Ariz., when he twice waved through a truck he knew to be carrying at least 88 pounds of cocaine to enter the country without having it searched.
“A corrupted border creates a grave threat to the national security of this country,” acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter said. “We will continue to work to ensure that those employed to protect our homeland do not sell their offices and badges to the highest bidder.”
Beginning in December 2001, the FBI set up their fake drug trafficking ring – nicknamed Operation Lively Green – and used cash to lure military and law enforcement personnel to help distribute the drugs or help move shipments through checkpoints. More than 1,230 pounds of cocaine – which had been seized in other operations – were transported by the 16 suspects. Many of the defendants received payoffs from the undercover agents for recruiting other public officials to help with the trafficking organization.
More than half of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants apprehended in the United States last year entered at the Mexico-Arizona border. Department of Homeland Security officials have expressed concern over recent intelligence that suggested al Qaeda terrorists may also use the same entry point.
“I’d like to think they’d be less likely to take money to knowingly let al Qaeda in. But if they take money to let drugs through, you might take money to let illegals through and you very well might take money to let al Qaeda through,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.