When Border Patrol sends its people, they’re not sending their best. In this case it sent a now-former agent who will go to prison after pleading guilty late last year to attempting to aid and abet cocaine smuggling through a border checkpoint.
In his plea last December, Oberlin Cortez Pena Jr. admitted that on two separate occasions, he used his position as an agent to help smuggle more than 5 kilos of cocaine through a South Texas checkpoint, including give his accomplices tips on how to distract the very good boys from the canine unit doing their jobs to detect illegal drugs. Cortez Pena Jr., just 22, will now face a decade in federal prison followed by five years’ supervised release. He also faces a potential $10 million fine.
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“Honest law enforcement is a cornerstone of public trust,” U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani said in a Jan. 20 statement from the Justice Department. “This defendant violated his oath to defend the Constitution, and he betrayed that trust to engage in criminal activity for financial gain.”
Federal protectors said in announcing Cortez Pena Jr.’s guilty plea last month that he “he used his knowledge as a BP agent and directed loads through particular checkpoint lanes, further acting as a scout and providing information about the inspection lanes and which one to use.”
The Justice Department said last week that the court also “assessed a sentencing enhancement for possession of a firearm during drug trafficking.” Cortez Pena Jr. had brandished an AR-15 rifle while meeting with a co-defendant. Cortez Pena Jr. would later claim he had the semi-automatic rifle because he was going to go hog hunting. Uh huh. The department said the explanation was “unconvincing” to the court, thankfully.
Four others from the operation were also convicted on various other charges, including alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit bribery.
”The Department of Homeland Security—Office of Inspector General conducted the investigation with assistance from Customs and Border Protection—Office of Professional Responsibility,” officials said. The latter is currently probing allegations against a top Border Patrol official who abruptly resigned last fall. We now know it’s because he’s facing a number of sexual misconduct allegations from women in the agency.
A spokesperson claimed that “any alleged or potential misconduct” is “immediately” referred for investigation, but even the former Customs and Border Protection commissioner has admitted it’s a good old boy’s club. “Too many of these guys just sort of stick together and protect each other,” Chris Magnus said in a report from The New York Times.
Example: When agents were investigated for their participation in a violent Facebook group, Customs and Border Protection worked to shield them from serious discipline. Just four were fired for their participation in a cesspool of a group where members fantasized about sexually violating women members of Congress, and where members mocked dead migrant kids.
It is common knowledge that Customs and Border Protection is the most corrupt federal law enforcement agency in the nation. In a 2015 report, a Homeland Security advisory council subcommittee said “arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies,” ProPublica reported in 2019. “CBP, the panel’s members concluded, was ‘vulnerable to corruption that threatens its effectiveness and national security.’”
So basically, corrupt agents are such a danger that they’re a threat to national security. Cortez Pena Jr. is off the force, and off the streets. But what about the corrupt and abusive agents who still work at checkpoints and in detaining children and families and who feel that the toxic brotherhood of this agency will shield them?
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