“FATHERLAND” JONES?

Will Corruption Cross the Line?

By Andrew Becker   |   Mother Jones   |   July 7, 2009

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

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 eyebrcows.

Corruption among border agents is nothing new. But what makes Crispin’s case different is that investigators from the Department of Homeland Security suspect she’d been recruited by a friend with ties to the Juárez cartel before she took the job. Almost immediately after completing her training and putting on her badge, she began to help traffickers “cross loads.” As many as three vans stuffed with drugs would pass through her inspection lane several times a week. By the time she was arrested in July 2007, Crispin is thought to have let more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana into the United States. In return, DHS agents say, she received millions in bribes, much of which remains unaccounted for. Last April, she pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years and ordered to forfeit as much as $5 million, plus jewelry and a truck.

At least two other recently arrested agents are suspected of being drug cartel plants. And as Customs and Border Protection continues its biggest hiring surge ever, investigators see infiltration as a growing threat. By this fall, CBP expects to have more than 20,000 agents, twice what it had in 2001. “We’re seeing fewer reports by agents of being approached by traffickers,” says James Smith, special agent in charge of the DHS inspector general’s El Paso office, which investigates corruption and misconduct cases. “We’re not just seeing disgruntled employees going bad. We’re seeing more cases where agents are already employed by the drug-trafficking and alien-smuggling organizations before they go to work for CBP.”

Speaking Spanish is a required skill for agents, and many have family and other ties to Mexico. Though agents are subjected to extensive background checks, it is a challenge to indentify red flags in applicants’ personal histories or connections across the border. Since the agency began giving polygraph tests to potential hires last year, investigators have found four applicants planted by the cartels. Still, they’re concerned that others may have already slipped through.

Some officials worry that the screening program may not be able to keep up with the pace of recruitment. But James Tomsheck, CBP’s assistant commissioner for internal affairs, says the agency hasn’t cut corners. Rather, he thinks the increased risk of cartels’ penetrating its ranks is an unintended consequence of the successful efforts to secure the border with fencing and more agents. “The threat, as it emanates from the cartels, is a real one,” he says. “Our concern is, what is it that we don’t know? Who is in our workforce that we have not yet detected?”

This article appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of Mother Jones. Andrew Becker is a CIR staff reporter.

MY ANALYSIS FOLLOWS:

This piece of “investigative” journalism is a perfect example of how far MOTHER JONES has drifted from it’s original purpose as a periodical meant to document the struggle for labor rights and equality in America.  It was named after Mary Harris Jones and I can’t swear to this hypothetical obviously but had Mary Harris Jones read this article in a magazine named after her, she’d be sick to her stomach.

The article is wholly supportive of the BushBaManuel “War On Drugs” which is an essential part of the imperialist domestic social control and foreign imperialist FRIENDLY FASCIST state.

What immediately strikes the reader is that the villains in the story are a Latina border guard, varied and sundry unnamed Mexican drug cartel bosses, and varied and sundry American Latino Spanish speakers! The heroes, of course, are the brave, intellectually superior (presumably White non-Spanish speaking) agents of the Department of Homeland Security.  I had to read this piece three times over just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

Secondarily, one notices that no other border guards, Mexican-Americans, or Mexican-Mexicans, perhaps with dissenting opinions are interviewed for even a fig-leaf of balance.  What’s also missing is any reference to Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s request of President Obama that he (Calderon) be allowed to  experiment with a drug decriminalization policy in an attempt to STOP CORRUPTION AND VIOLENCE among all sectors of Mexican society, including and especially among his police force, prosecutorial service,  and judiciary.  This request, of course, was laughed at, brushed-off, and a stepped-up US military, para-military and law enforcement effort INSIDE MEXICO named un-ironically “Plan Mexico” was implemented.  I’d bet Mexican sources would have plenty of stories to tell of the corruption of Homeland Security officials inside and outside of Mexico.

With an attitude — and history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine) — like this from MOTHER JONES, I feel very uncomfortable writing in to complain for fear that the putzes at MOTHER JONES would put my name on some DHS list.  So, I’ll do my complaining here and at THE PITCHFORK, thank you very much.

In conclusion, I am wholly comfortable in proclaiming that MOTHER JONES is the functional equivalent if not worse than  NATIONAL REVIEW.  In fact, NATIONAL REVIEW  is much better in my estimation.  It often has well-written, occasionally amusing, pieces though equally antithetical to my worldview as this trash in MOTHER JONES.  And I know if I read NATIONAL REVIEW I might get American Exceptionalist Authoritarian Imperialist propaganda, but I’ll never have to wade through bullshit New Age and Woo-Woo articles as credulous of superstition as any Fundamentalist religious weekly might be.

UPDATE: The author of the piece apparently is a real anti-Latino bastard. http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/projects/noticetoappear

Don’t be fooled by some of the pretty-sounding headlines.  Read the stories and the meaning is plain.  Latinos are vermin and the Mexican government is trying to ruin America