Jun 18

Inland BP check

Like the majority of truckers caught hauling contraband, American trucker Wayne West of Balch Springs Texas was doing it to make a few extra bucks

LAREDO — Border agents found 48 illegal immigrants in the back of a tractor trailer during a routine stop at a checkpoint in south Texas.
The trailer was refrigerated, according to the driver’s attorney, and all of those in the trailer declined medical treatment, immigration officials said.

The driver, Wayne West of Balch Springs, was charged with transporting illegal immigrants, according to court documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Laredo. He’s scheduled for a detention hearing on Friday.

His attorney, Russell Jordan, said he couldn’t say much about the case because the investigation is still being done, but he noted that the trailer was refrigerated and no one was injured.

An inspection dog alerted border agents to the presence of people or drugs in the trailer during the stop, authorities said.
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Feb 19

In the 1990s, the Border Patrol worked closely with Grupo Beta, an elite Mexican police unit. After a promising start, the unit faltered under allegations of wrongdoing and functions today as an unarmed humanitarian agency.

In a politically sensitive operation at the Arizona- Mexico border, U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican federal police officers are training together, sharing intelligence and coordinating patrols for the first time.

The goal of the historic partnership: a systematic joint attack on northbound flows of drugs and migrants, and southbound shipments of guns and cash. It is part of a major, unannounced crackdown started in recent months involving hundreds of U.S. and Mexican officers in the border’s busiest smuggling corridor.

The initiative appears likely to expand. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Mexican Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna will sign a declaration Thursday in Mexico City agreeing to replicate the experiment. Eventually, officials say, joint operations borderwide could lead to the creation of a Mexican force serving as a counterpart to the Border Patrol — an agency once regarded with nationalistic aversion in Mexico.
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Oct 17

US-Canada border crossing at Blaine Washington

US-Canada border crossing at Blaine Washington

Blaine, Wash. – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested a 43-year-old Surrey, British Columbia, man on October 10 for allegedly attempting to export 192 pounds of cocaine, worth more than $3 million.

Sukhvinder Shoker, a Canadian citizen,(one of those that wears a diaper on his head) was originally en route to Canada driving a commercial shipment of household goods when he was encountered by CBP officers of the Blaine Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team working in concert with agents of the Border Enforcement Security Task Force at the Pacific Highway port of entry. A narcotic detector dog named “Mac” was used to search the truck and trailer and gave a positive alert to the presence of a narcotic odor.

During a detailed inspection of the trailer officers discovered a secret compartment concealing 24 cardboard boxes which contained a total of 76 bricks of an unknown substance which field tested positive for cocaine.
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Sep 25

CBP agents with one of the vans involved in the border incident at San Ysdiro POE

CBP agents with one of the vans involved in the border incident at San Ysdiro POE

MEXICO CITY – The three Mexicans who were injured when U.S. federal agents opened fire on several vehicles to prevent them from entering the United States illegally are out of danger and have received consular protection, the Foreign Relations Secretariat said.

“The Consulate General of Mexico in San Diego is carrying out actions to protect the Mexicans who were affected by the incident” Tuesday afternoon at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the secretariat said in a statement.

The border crossing, which links San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, was shut down around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday after the U.S. agents opened fire on three vans believed to be carrying illegal immigrants that tried to evade inspection.
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Sep 23

Officers from Tijuana PD and Federal Police gather on Mexican side of the US-Mexico border after arresting a 17 yo juvenile who fled back into Mexico after the US Border Patrols murderous attempt to stop three vans of human smugglers

Officers from Tijuana PD and Federal Police gather on Mexican side of the US-Mexico border after arresting a 17 yo juvenile who fled back into Mexico after the US Border Patrols murderous attempt to stop three vans of human smugglers

Three Mexican men were arrested on federal human-trafficking charges on Wednesday, and 75 Mexicans were detained as illegal immigrants, after three vans in which they were riding tried to run through the border station at San Diego on Tuesday afternoon, federal immigration and San Diego police officials said.

CBP officers FIRED ACROSS NINE LANES OF TRAFFIC in an attempt to stop the vans at one of the United States busiest land crossing borders that sees and average of 40,000 vehicles a day

Two of the people in the van were injured, one critically and one with non life threatening injuries and were taken to area hospitals.
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Sep 01

A van stuffed front to back with nearly 6,000 pounds of marijuana ran out of gas as it headed toward the Paso Del Norte border crossing and an inspection lane manned by Margarita Crispin, who was sentenced in April 2008 to 20 years in federal prison for helping drug traffickers. PHOTO: DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL, EL PASO

A van stuffed front to back with nearly 6,000 pounds of marijuana ran out of gas as it headed toward the Paso Del Norte border crossing and an inspection lane manned by Margarita Crispin, who was sentenced in April 2008 to 20 years in federal prison for helping drug traffickers. PHOTO: DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL, EL PASO

On July 1st, MTO reported on the arrest of Customs and Border Protection officer Margarita Crispin of El Paso and followed up on the story on April 21, 2008 when she entered a guilty plea to the charges against her.

Andrew Becker placed this follow up in Mother Jones titled “Will Corruption Cross the Line?”

The rumors about Margarita Crispin started soon after her first day as a customs officer in El Paso, Texas. In March 2003, Crispin started working the line at the Paso Del Norte bridge, across from Ciudad Juárez. Nearly one-fifth of all drugs seized coming across the border enter through the El Paso-Juárez area, and the region is viciously contested by Mexican cartels. So when Crispin waved off the dogs that sniff out drugs in the long line of cars waiting to enter the United States, saying she didn’t like them around her, it raised a few eyebrows.
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