WASHINGTON - As the threat of internal corruption dogs the ranks of border security forces, the Obama administration is considering regularly rotating agents to other locations to distance them from the persuasive power and money of Mexico's drug cartels.
Such a decision would subject locally recruited U.S. Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers to the periodic relocations already required for agents within the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other premier federal law enforcement agencies.
"It is something we are looking at very carefully," James Tomsheck, chief of internal affairs for Customs and Border Protection, told the Houston Chronicle in an interview. "It is too early to make a (final) assessment, but we certainly believe it does have an impact."
Four CBP employees have been arrested on corruption-related charges in the last four months. Another 132 CBP employees have been arrested since 2005 as a result of investigations by Tomsheck's 214 internal affairs investigators across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General's 213 criminal investigators have arrested 178 CBP employees across the country as well since 2003 for criminal misconduct - including 26 in the last three years on corruption-related charges.
Tomsheck, a career federal law enforcement officer, relocated six times during a 23-year career with the Secret Service before joining the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security in 2006. The relocations would be the latest step by federal authorities to combat cartels' attempts to penetrate DHS.
The Obama administration's approach remains a matter of debate among some Texas lawmakers. Sen. John Cornyn, R-San Antonio, a former state attorney general and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warns that routine transfers could jeopardize border agents' ability to build local relationships that pay off with tips and intelligence.
"I want to know a little bit more about whether dropping people into new environments has actually been demonstrated to be successful in dealing with the potential for corruption," Cornyn said.
About 8,000 of the recruits for front-line positions in the U.S. Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection since 2008 - or about one quarter - have undergone lie detector tests, in addition to routine criminal background checks. By next year, Tomsheck said 100 percent of new hires for front-line posts will face polygraphs.
Officials also are considering eventually subjecting veteran employees among the 21,444 U.S. Border Patrol agents and the 20,582 Customs and Border Protection officers to polygraphs as part of re-screening that takes place every five years - an approach currently used only by the FBI.
The potential changes come as Mexican cartels have infiltrated the ranks of law enforcement personnel to chart safe transit for multibillion-dollar smuggling operations that move drugs, cash, guns and illegal immigrants across the 1,969-mile southern border.
Officials concede rapid expansion of DHS ranks has made it easier.
"It is more desirable for our adversaries to attempt to compromise our employees or infiltrate our agency than ever before," says Tomsheck. "It is perhaps a more important aspect of their achieving success than it has been before."
Adds acting Inspector General Charles Edwards: "As efforts to secure the border meet with increasing success, the smugglers have been forced to become more creative and clever in their illicit activities."
CBP also has enlisted Michael C. Mines, a former counterintelligence expert at the FBI who built a career tracking suspected spies.
In Texas a year ago, a former Customs and Border Protection inspector stationed at Pharr was convicted in Houston of accepting $10,000 to enable drug traffickers to transport marijuana through his inspection lane at the border. Another CBP officer was convicted in El Paso of accepting $5,000 to permit a collaborator to smuggle illegal immigrants through his inspection lane.
"There has never been a policy of transferring border agents on a regular basis because of the cost," said Susan Ginsberg, a homeland security expert who served on the staff of the 9/11 commission. "I think that people who are allowed to stay in their hometowns are probably more vulnerable to corruption, especially by friends or families who have become involved in the drug trade and can exert personal pressure on them."