By Tatiana Sanchez Leaders of the national Border Patrol union on Wednesday challenged the findings of a scathing report issued this week by a law enforcement task force that found U.S. Customs and Border Protection has done little to combat widespread corruption and lack of accountability within the agency. Continue reading

  By San Diego Union Tribune Editorial Board The vast expansion of the Border Patrol after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has made it by far the largest law-enforcement agency in the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the patrol’s parent department, has 44,000 armed officers, more than double the number its component agencies had in 2001. Such heavy demand and rapid expansion were bound to lead to a few bad hires. Continue reading

  By Jean Guerrero A panel of law enforcement experts found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has made little movement on a call to sharply increase the number of agents assigned to investigate internal corruption, calling it a mistake that could lead to a major scandal if it isn't addressed more quickly. Continue reading

  By Patricia Leigh Brown TIJUANA, Mexico — Weekday mornings at 5, when the lights on distant hillsides across the border still twinkle in the blackness, Martha, a high school senior, begins her arduous three-hour commute to school. She groggily unlocks the security gate guarded by the family Doberman and waits in the glare of the Pemex filling station for the bus to the border. Her fellow passengers, grown men with their arms folded, jostle her in their sleep.Martha’s destination, along with dozens of young friends — United States citizens all living in “TJ,” as they affectionately call their city — is a public high school eight miles away in Chula Vista, Calif., where they were born and where they still claim to live. Continue reading

  By: Brian Bennett The system for disciplining abusive or corrupt Border Patrol agents and officers is so flawed that it hardly acts to deter criminal misconduct in the nation's largest law enforcement agency, according to an independent task force that investigated the problems. The team's 49-page final report will be submitted Tuesday to a homeland security advisory council that commissioned it, and then given to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. A copy was obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Critics long have accused U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency of the Border Patrol, of ignoring or downplaying abuses by agents and officers, including shootings of unarmed people, and of doing too little to stem systematic corruption by drug cartels, smugglers and other criminals. Continue reading

  By: Douglas Brown Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson addressed the state of the nation’s border security last week, with a particular emphasis on the southern border. Continue reading

  DHS advisory panel finds systemic failures in CBP Washington D.C./Border Region - Today, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Integrity Advisory Panel released a scornful series of recommendations that CBP must implement in order to address systemic failures in disciplining abusive or corrupt CBP agents and officers. Continue reading

  By: Enrique Limon Border Patrol agents’ shootings of individuals who throw rocks at them follow “an astonishing pattern,” a report reveals.   Continue reading

  Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says a series of border security changes that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed upon this week are designed to make cross-border travel "smoother." Speaking on CTV's Question Period, Goodale said the new rules will impact preclearance procedures, information-sharing, and no-fly lists in the two countries. Continue reading

  For almost six years, the Hernandez Rojas family has asked our government to provide them with vindication and justice for the preventable death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas. In 2010, Anastasio, a longtime resident of San Diego, was brutally beaten, shot with a Taser and killed by 13 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents. Since his death, the Hernandez Rojas family has been subjected to delaying tactics and refusals to prosecute. Not only has our justice system failed this family, it has failed our communities. Continue reading