Violence and corruption scandal at CBP: FBI clean up or cover up? Pt. 6
Published 17 June 2015
It has been more than a year since James F. Tomsheck, the senior executive at Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs (CBP IA), was unceremoniously reassigned to a new position at CBP. In response to his demotion from assistant commissioner at CBP IA, Tomsheck lambasted CBP leadership with charges of rampant mismanagement and accused CBP employees of widespread violence and corruption. Have these systemic problems within the largest federal law enforcement agency in the land been resolved, or have the FBI, CBP, and DHS senior leadership chosen to ignore these problems? Is there reasonable public accountability for the alleged criminal behavior at CBP and CBP IA, or are the alleged victims — all the honest, hardworking CBP employees, and the general public — still in the dark about both the hard facts and the consequences of this unprecedented scandal? In short, has there been a clean-up or a cover up?
It has been more than a year since James F. Tomsheck, the senior executive at Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs (CBP IA), was unceremoniously reassigned to a new position at CBP. In response to his demotion from assistant commissioner at CBP IA, Tomsheck lambasted CBP leadership with charges of rampant mismanagement and accused CBP employees of widespread violence and corruption (Brian Bennett, “Border agency removes its own chief of internal affairs,” Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2014). ).
Tomsheck’s revealing allegations against the CBP, including lightning counter-charges by senior CBP leadership against Tomsheck, define the most significant scandal within this federal law enforcement agency since Congress’s officially mandated Border Patrol Agents and Customs Officers in 1924.
The FBI, CBP, CBP IA, and DHS apparently now seem fully satisfied that justice, integrity, and functionality have been restored at CBP and CBP IA along with all national security issues along the Mexican border, which may have been jeopardized. However, to date the FBI has announced no criminal charges filed either against Tomsheck, the CBP executives Tomsheck identified, or any of the other thousands of employees Tomsheck and others suggested might be guilty of corruption, violence, and supervisory mismanagement within the ranks of CBP and CBP IA.
By the time the FBI’s Mark A. Morgan walked out the office door at CBP IA after temporarily assuming Tomsheck’s position as senior executive, had these unprecedented systemic problems truly been resolved within the largest federal law enforcement agency in the land? Or did the FBI, CBP, and DHS senior leadership simply choose to ignore serious systemic problems at CBP and CBP IA, including alleged key players like Tomsheck and those he vilified? In short, is there reasonable public accountability for the alleged criminal behavior at CBP and CBP IA, or are the alleged victims, all of the honest, hardworking CBP employees, and the general public still in the dark about both the hard facts and consequences of this unprecedented scandal?
Clean up or cover up?
What happened?
On Monday, 9 June 2014, Tomsheck was removed from his position as assistant commissioner at CBP IA. On the previous Friday, Tomsheck held a powerful and prestigious position in our largest federal law enforcement agency now exceeding 60,000 employees, but he was quickly reassigned to the relatively inconsequential position as executive director for national programs at CBP (it now appears Tomsheck may never have assumed the responsibilities of this CBP reassignment, but instead taken paid vacation leave until replaced by another CBP official).
As the senior executive at CBP IA since 2006, Tomsheck was charged with leading “…a comprehensive integrity strategy designed to prevent, detect and investigate all threats to the integrity of the CBP and its workforce.” Additionally he was expected to sustain “…an integrity continuum, reviewing CBP operations on an ongoing basis to ensure that incidents of corruption and misconduct are prevented, detected and investigated timely” (James F. Tomsheck Assistant Commissioner of Office of Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs, CBP-IA Five Year Report, Washington, D.C., 31 December 2012, p. 6).
However, after his sixth year at CBP IA Tomsheck, who possessed more than two decades of prior experience while at the U.S. Secret Service, charged that between 5 percent and 10 percent of all CBP Border Patrol Agents and Customs Officers “…are actively corrupt or were at some point in their career.” In sharp contrast, CBP senior leadership in 2012 strongly believed the rates of corruption were in fact at 20 percent or higher in briefings given to the FBI. The FBI took notice of the difference in corruption statistics between Tomsheck and CBP senior leadership; it soon began conducting increased numbers of investigations upon CBP employees stationed along the Mexican border. (Andrew Becker, “Ousted chief accuses border agency of shooting cover-ups, corruption,” Center for Investigative Reporting, 14 August 2014).
Upon his removal from his post as assistant commissioner at CBP IA last summer, for the first time Tomsheck alleged that 25 percent of the twenty-eight immigrant deaths involving CBP employees at the Mexican border since 2010 are, in his own words, “highly suspect.”Tomsheck claimed that, “In nearly every instance there was an effort by Border patrol leadership to make a case to justify the shooting versus doing a genuine, appropriate review of the information and the facts at hand.” (Becker, “Ousted chief accuses border agency of shooting cover-ups, corruption”.
Seeking protection under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, Tomsheck has remained silent since last summer. Only most recently did he give his first public interview. Speaking in reference to an unrelated incident of alleged sexual discrimination involving CBP employees, Tomsheck said that he presented his CBP superiors with evidence of sexual misconduct by agents and officers in the spring of 2014, evidence he says they ignored and failed to act upon. Tomsheck maintains that as a result of this and possibly other evidence involving criminal activity among CBP employees that he provided his CBP superiors, “…he was pressured to resign and retired early” (Anna Werner and Laura Strickler, “Disturbing sex abuse within agency that patrols U.S. Border, says former top official,” CBS News, 4 May 2015).
Upon his removal from head of the CBP IA in June 2014, Tomsheck blamed CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin and Acting CBP Chief David Aguilar as among those responsible for the violence, corruption, and dysfunctionality at CBP. In sum, Tomsheck alleges that “…he (Tomsheck) was ultimately scapegoated for not performing a job that wasn’t, by CBP policy, assigned to the CBP IA” (Becker, “Ousted chief accuses border agency of shooting cover-ups, corruption”).
Several high level officials or previous officials at CBP supported Tomsheck’s allegations at the time he was reassigned. Adding to Tomsheck’s additional credibility, in addition to his long career in federal law enforcement and his total of eight years of service at CBP IA, are documents suggesting that Tomsheck was pressured by CBP senior leadership as early as 2010 to keep quiet about the prevalence of CBP corruption. In effect, CBP senior leadership told Tomsheck, according to Tomsheck, to redefine his definition of CBP corruption so that the CBP corruption statistics appeared to be lower among CBP employees than they actually were (Becker, “Ousted chief accuses border agency of shooting cover-ups, corruption,”, p. 3).
After Tomsheck was demoted at CBP, Anthony Triplett was named as acting head of CBP IA, then Triplett was replaced within weeks by the FBI’s Morgan. Morgan is the deputy assistant director for inspections at the FBI.
At this same time, a DHS senior official stated, “There will be a complete examination of (CBP) internal affairs” (Bennett, “Border agency removes its own chief of internal affairs,” p. 2).
Morgan would seem especially qualified to supervise or participate in an investigation of alleged conflicts at CBP IA. At the FBI Morgan’s job description is to conduct “…examinations of the FBI’s investigative and administrative operations at headquarters and field offices to ensure compliance with established regulations and to make recommendations for improved organizational efficiency and effectiveness (FBI Headquarters Divisions and Officers, 20 May 2015).
More specifically, Morgan is tasked within the current position at FBI to conduct pre-inspection analysis of FBI units that require investigation by his office. This process includes “…the collection and review of data to serve as a basis for on-site reviews; an on-site review including investigative and administrative file reviews and interviews with appropriate personnel. These may include work papers developed during the on-site review such as hand-written notes, interrogatories with answers, interview notes and checklists of the items.” Morgan and his staff then regularly complete a written report to superiors that might include instructions to correct deficiencies in the unit examined. Finally, Morgan would produce recommendations to enhance operations along with a follow-up review report ensuring that the inspected entity adequately responded to all instructions and recommendations.
One might presume that, in addition to he investigatory powers and experience Morgan brings from his full-time FBI assignment, along with FBI resources and staff, Morgan would be aided by CBP IA personnel. In particular, this would include the CBP IA Special Investigative Unit based in a field office in Washington, D.C.
Given Morgan’s professional credentials, he would seem uniquely qualified to help identify, recommend, and help to resolve conflict within and between CBP and CBP IA. Originally a deputy sheriff from Missouri, then a Los Angeles Police Department officer, Morgan is an attorney and active-duty marine who served as chief of the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center, Critical Incident Response Group. Subsequently Morgan held the position of Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s El Paso Division in 2011 before becoming deputy assistant director of inspections. In particular, Morgan’s law enforcement experience along the Mexican border would seemingly provide him a boots-on-the-ground understanding of the challenging daily work undertaken by both Border Patrol Agents and Customs Officers as well as the their exposure to the influence of powerful drug cartels. (Mark A. Morgan Named Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s El Paso Division, FBI National Press office, 17 October 2011).
It must be noted that it is highly unusual, even on a temporary basis, for anyone outside CBP to be assigned a CBP leadership position even on a temporary basis. However, Tomsheck’s charges against his CBP superiors and CBP employees were without precedent in the history of this federal law enforcement agency as were the allegations by CBP senior executives against him. Hopes were high among some, including this observer, that Morgan as an outsider from the FBI would step into CBP IA to help document the breadth of the problems at CBP and CBP IA, identify those accountable, initiate the cases into the legal process at DHS as required by his investigation, list the institutional lessons learned, provide specific and systemic recommendations leading to organizational efficiency, then provide short and long-term oversight to insure that both CBP and CBP IA performed at their optimum efficiencies. (Robert Lee Maril, “1.6%: CBP data show dysfunctional Internal Affairs,” Homeland Security News Wire, 12 June 2014).
Much progress could have been institutionally achieved at CBP and CBP IA had this process steadfastly been followed, then an unclassified version of Morgan’s presumed investigation, or that by some other as yet unnamed official, made available to the public.
But to date there is no report available to the public.
What has changed at CBP and CBP IA since the scandal
There have been no FBI, CBP, or DHS statements, press releases, or any other public statements to date outlining Morgan’s presumed investigation of crucial problems at CBP IA, the findings of such an investigation, those, if any, held accountable, a presumed list of lessons learned and recommendations, new policies and procedures warranted, or scheduled oversight. However, from interviews with government employees, internal documents, government documents and reports, and media accounts emerges a clearer picture of the magnitude of the problems at CBP and CBP IA along with the organizational changes to date which have resulted at CBP and CBP IA.
First, the Integrity Program Division (IPD), identified as one of the most problematic units under Tomsheck, was recently merged with another CBP IA division, the Counterintelligence and Operations Liaison Group (CIOLG) in March, 2015, under CBP IA Acting Assistant Commissioner Anthony Triplett. (Triplett, who came to CBP IA from the Secret Service in 2007, one year after Tomsheck, replaced Tomsheck for several weeks in June 2014, before the FBI’s Morgan was assigned to the position. In turn, after Morgan returned to the FBI, Triplett once again was appointed to Tomsheck’s position as the acting head of CBP IA.) Plans for this merger began several months prior to the in-house announcement.
The merger of IPD and CIOLG is now called the Threat Mitigation Division (TMD). The TMD’s stated mission is, “To identify internal and external threats to CBP’s mission, information and people, and to develop and implement strategies to mitigate the identified threat.”
Leading the newly created TMD is Michael Mines. Mines joined the FBI as a Special Agent in 1983 and since that time focused upon “Violent Crime, Organized Crime, Cyber Crime, White-Collar Crime, and Foreign Counterintelligence” in a variety of posts. His most recent FBI post was as, “…Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office’s Criminal Division”. In 2009 he became a Special Agent in Charge at CBP. Hired by Tomsheck, Mines was responsible for forming and leading the CIOLG at CBP IA. In the 2012 CDP IA organizational chart, Mines is listed as “Counterintelligence & Operational Liaison Group” directly positioned under William Welby, “Special Assistant for Administration & Operations”. In the following year, 2013, Mines’s job title remains the same, but he and Welby now directly answer not to Tomsheck, but to Paul Hamrich who assumed the full-time position of deputy assistant commissioner under Tomsheck.
The assistant director at the new TMD is Susan A. Keverline. Keverline worked at IPD under Tomsheck as a Behavioral Researcher with a variety of responsibilities including suicide awareness, education, and prevention among CBP employees. She holds a Ph.D. from George Washington University in Counseling and Human Development. Prior to coming to IPD, Keverline was a specialist for several years in Cyber Security.
Under Tomsheck’s leadership, the IPD was “…the research, analysis, and education component of the Office of Internal Affairs…” (CBP-IA Five Year Report ). Although a relatively small unit in CBP IA, these federal law enforcers at IPD took on major tasks under Tomsheck. “Beginning in 2007, the decision was made to expand IPD and its capacity to move from a reactive posture primarily conducting post case analysis work to a strategic, proactive stance with analysts and behavior research specialists working collaboratively to identify potential acts of corruption and misconduct, indentifying potential vulnerabilities in CBP operations…”.
Tomsheck’s IPD is his one of his major steps to improve the professional capabilities and standards of investigations at CBP IA. Tomsheck came to believe that rampant CBP employee violence, corruption, and mismanagement were the result of hiring, training, and placement of thousands of new Agents and Officers as mandated by Congress in 2006. Among the current CBP Agents and Officers now numbering more than 40,000, the vast majority was hired since 2006.
The secondapparent substantive change since Morgan’s investigation at CBP IA is Tomsheck’s job status. According to his own words, he was forced into an early retirement. In spite of the allegations hurled at Tomsheck by CBP senior leadership, no known criminal charges have to date been brought against Tomsheck for any alleged offenses while serving as the deputy commissioner at CBP IA from 2006 to 2014. It is not clear if Tomsheck retains his full federal pension and other retirement benefits.
Third, to date Tomsheck’s allegations against CBP leadership, including Bersin and David Aguilar, appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Alan Bersin currently serves as Assistant Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer in the Office of Policy at DHS. David Aguilar retired from his position as Acting Commissioner of CBP in February 2013, and is employed at a private security firm.
Fourth, Janine Corrado, the former IPD director, was promoted to the position of Chief of Staff for Gregory Marshall in the fall, 2015. Marshall is the Chief Security Officer at the Department of Homeland Security. Corrado served not only as the deputy director and director of the troubled IPD, but was promoted by Tomsheck soon after to the position of his Chief of Staff.
In fact, Corrado has received three promotions at CBP IA and DHS within a six-year span.
In addition to these GS promotions, Corrado had also received the “Integrity Program Division’s 2012 Most Valuable Player” award for her work at IPD. Tomsheck awarded Corrado this division honor because “Her creativity, wealth of knowledge and experience has left an indelible mark on IPD and has paved the path IPD is on today” (“Integrity Program Divisions’ 2012 Most Valuable Player”, CBPnet, 20 December 2012, p. 1).
In particular, Tomsheck gave this annual award to Corrado, “…in recognition of over four years of dedication, commitment, innovation, and leadership to IPD where she served as both the director and deputy director…”
While at Tomsheck’s IPD, Jeffrey M. Matta was promoted to the rank of GS 15 like Corrado. However, Matta now appears to hold the rank of a GS 14 at his new CBP position at the CBP Office of Field Operation at the National Targeting Center in Reston, Virginia.
Before Matta’s was apparently demoted to his new position, he was promoted twice by Tomsheck. First he was handpicked by Tomsheck and promoted to IPD deputy director. Then, when Corrado was promoted to Tomsheck’s position as his Chief of Staff, Matta was promoted to the position of IPD director. It would appear that Matta no longer comes to work in a suit as do CBP managers and supervisors; he now wears the working uniform of a Border Patrol Officer.
Fifth, through early retirements, unexpected retirements, reassignments, and transfers to other federal agencies, only a small number of the twenty-six former IPD employees remain to merge into TMD. Before this unusually quick downsizing of professional and administrative staff at IPD, and prior to the merger with CLIOG, there were 8 IPD Senior Security Analysts and Security Analysts at CBP IA headquarters in Washington, D.C., two IPD Behavioral Researchers, several IPD administrative assistants, and thirteen other IPD Analysts spread in field offices throughout the country.
The few remaining IPD personnel, now merged into the new TMD with the CIOLG staff, are all that is left of Tomshecks’ prized IPD intelligence unit that he personally envisioned, staffed, nurtured, promoted, and generously resourced. In 2008 IPD under Tomsheck’s leadership had a budget of $2.6 million, but by 2012 its budget had almost doubled.
Last, but far from least, no known criminal charges to date have been brought against any other executives, managers, or other employees at CBP or CBP IA in regards to the allegations brought by Tomsheck against his CBP superiors, CBP leaderships concern for high rates of corruption and violence within their employees, or the same concerns maintained by the FBI. In addition, no CBP supervisors or employees, including Border Patrol Officers and Customs Officers posted along the Mexican border, to date appear to face criminal charges as a direct result of Morgan’s, or some other unidentified official’s, presumed investigation while at CBP IA.
After presumably investigating CBP and CBP IA because of serious allegations brought by Tomsheck and equally serious counter-accusations by senior CBP leadership in their own defense, it now appears that the only significant consequences of FBI’s Morgan’s investigation led to nothing more or less than the merger of two units at CBP IA into the newly minted TMD, the forced early retirement of Tomsheck, and the possibly related promotion of Corrado and the possibly related demotion of Matta.
The rapid downsizing of IPD personnel before its merger with CIOLG also appears to be an unlikely coincidence. Interviews suggest that many of the former IPD employees, even though they only did what they were told to do by Tomsheck, Corrado, and Matta, voluntarily left IPD for a variety of reasons including fear of retaliation, concern their professional careers might be irreparably associated with the scandal, and frustration and stress because their legitimate complaints through agency channels were ignored or discredited. It was some of these federal employees, in fact, who eventually contacted the national media because of their growing concerns for the consequences of IPD mismanagement including weakened national security along the Mexican border.
What FBI’s Morgan missed at CBP and CBP IA
The Homeland Security News Wire (HSNW) series to date has specifically identified numerous disturbing allegations against specific individuals and programs at CBP and CBP IA, including IPD, none of which have been made public by the FBI or the CBP. These allegations, although apparently ignored by Morgan or his doppelganger, in fact appear to find support not only among those who observed the questionable actions and behaviors of specific individuals, but are documented in internal agency documents, personal emails, intra-agency correspondence, as well as a variety of relevant government reports.
Most disturbing about all of these allegations is the scale of ineptitude, the mindless mismanagement, the bureaucratic hubris among leadership, and possible consequences upon the lives of innocent citizens.
At the level of personnel mismanagement among CBP IA directors handpicked and supervised by Tomsheck, none is a better example of thoughtless, mean-spirited, and illegal mismanagement than the egregious case of Navy Lieutenant Commander J. Gregory Richardson (retired). A decorated career officer with almost three decades of service in the Air Force and the Navy, Richardson returned from his fourth deployment to his job as Senior Security Analyst in the IPD. A former Special Assistant to Tomsheck, Richardson seriously injured his back while deployed in the service of his country. Instead of having his documented medical conditions accommodated in the civilian job at IPD upon his return-at the time he received an 80 percent medical disability from multiple injuries while deployed- his supervisors and Tomsheck ignored federal law and federal policies by consistently refusing to acknowledge his medical needs in the workplace.
Richardson was forced into an early retirement by Corrado, IPD director, and Matta, assistant director, both under the supervision of Tomsheck. Entering a bureaucratic morass from which he has still not surfaced Richardson, an African American with a Masters Degree in Sociology who had received positive annual evaluations and was valued for his work ethic and productivity at IPD prior to returning from deployment, has yet to receive the full military and federal benefits which he earned through his years of service. (Robert Lee Maril, “Vet alleges supervisors at CBP IA ignored his disability: “He Just needed an ounce of compassion”-Pt. 1,” HSNW, 28 October 2014; and Maril, “Tomsheck forced disabled veteran from CBP IA-Pt. 2, HSNW, 24 November 2014).
Tomsheck’s “July Amnesty,” in contrast, demonstrates the damage to a large number of alleged victims of CBP employees that can be accomplished by dysfunctional and unskilled leadership. In addition to the personal and financial costs to an individual like Lieutenant Commander Richardson, the July Amnesty suggests the enormous scale of this scandal. Such a large number of victims warrants consideration of criminal charges rather than a slap on the wrist for those responsible.
The July Amnesty demonstrates that IPD director Corrado, and her deputy director, Matta, appear to lack essential stewardship skills of computer-based security case files as well as a basic understanding of the harmful consequences of their actions. The two supervisors appear to be directly responsible for the disappearance, loss, untimely reanalysis, and/or backdating of as many as 713 CBP IA security cases.
Each of these 713 cases-and there may have been many more-involved at least one CBP employee alleged to have committed crimes ranging from a misdemeanor to a homicide. All of these security cases entrusted to the data stewardship of Corrado and Matta were abandoned for as many as three or more under a case management system supervised only by Corrado and Matta (Robert Lee Maril, “Tomsheck’s ‘July Amnesty’: CBP IA loses hundreds of cases alleging criminal activity by CBP Employees-Pt. 3,” HSNW, 12 January 2015).
On 30 June 2011, IPD staff, according to IPD minutes, were shocked when told by Corrado that “aging cases,” more than 700 cases that analysts previously had worked on, completed, and sent up to Corrado and Matta for their final reviews and signatures. Instead these cases in fact languished in computer files for years while all those involved, including the victims, waited for their resolution.
Corrado stated: “Cannot stress enough the importance of amnesty in July. It is very important that you clean up all of your aging cases.” Analysts were stunned in part because 700 cases cannot be professionally analyzed and/or reanalyzed in one month’s time; normally it would take 4 to 5 months to professionally accomplish this gargantuan task.
Said Corrado to her IPD senior analysts and analysts: “Amnesty is a good thing. Make it work.”
The consequences of the July Amnesty are three fold: first, the alleged victims of crimes by CBP employees, as well as their families, needlessly waited months, years, or possibly are still waiting for the investigation of these cases; second, the alleged CBP perpetrators of these crimes may have never been adjudicated properly as dictated by CBP IA policy and procedures; and third, these same CBP employees alleged to have committed crimes may have retired with full benefits, transferred to other federal law enforcement agency jobs and/or to the private sector where they pose a potential and serious danger.
Case backlogs were rampant not only in IPD, but at least one other division at IPD, the Personnel Security Division (PSD). PSD is the largest division under Tomsheck with a budget in 2012 of $81 million.
Like the July Amnesty, the Suspicious Activity Reports Exploitation Initiative (SAREX) program provides additional concrete evidence that Tomsheck’s CPB IA spun out of control exceeding not only CBP procedures and policies, but federal law. When this happened, literally thousands became potential victims under SAREX. Again an IPD program supervised by Corrado and Matta under the watchful leadership of Tomsheck, SAREX’s stated objective beginning in 2011 is, wisely enough, to deter CBP employees posted along the Mexican border from corruption and other criminal behavior. The first pilot program was targeted at CBP employees in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (Robert Lee Maril, “CBP IA’s SAREX: Tomsheck’s program goes rogue-Pt. 4,” HSNW, 18 February 2015).
The exact goal of SAREX, rarely explicated clearly within CBP IA, is to improve background checks and periodic investigations of high-risk employees using data sources provided by the FBI National Public Corruption Task Forces. But by the time SAREX was operating for more than a year, the list of CBP employees under investigation had grown to 3,000! This list included 639 CBP employees who were not up for reinvestigation along with many other CBP employees who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and other locations far from the Mexican border.
The FBI apparently realized early on that SAREX was poorly researched by IPD, poorly planned, suffered from an inadequately methodology, lacked professional standards and procedures, and contained no metrics by which to judge its efficacy. From SAREX’s earliest beginnings, the FBI refused to participate.
SAREX went rogue.
The initial 30-day pilot project directly supervised on a day-by-day basis by Corrado and Matta, a program about which these two managers boasted during staff meetings, was soon investigated by Marie Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. As an aside to her detailed critique and numerous immediate and required recommendations for SAREX, Ms Callahan notes that there are many unanswered questions about SAREX because, “…there continue to be discrepancies in the data that call into question CBP IA’s data stewardship.”
Operation Hometown may be the crown jewel of the CBP IA’s reckless actions that would seem to deserve much more than a minor reorg or Tomsheck’s early retirement with presumed full benefits. In yet another attempt to address violence, corruption, and graft among CBP employees along the Mexican border, the analysts at IPD created Operation Hometown. Unlike operation SAREX, Operation Hometown was methodologically sound, met all CBP professional standards along with CBP policies and procedures, quickly operationalized after extensive field testing, and highly successful as measured by a number of metrics.
Operation Hometown specifically targeted Border Patrol Agents and Customs Officers who had graduated from the agency academy, then were posted back, under a new CBP policy in 2006, to the border communities in which they had been born and raised. Based upon a number of pretests and studies with significant sample sizes, IPD analysts conclusively demonstrated that these Agents and Officers were at a much higher risk of corruption from the drug cartels than other agents not posted to their border hometowns.
Never the less, after two years of measurable success with Operation Hometown, Tomsheck cancelled this successful program in 2012 without warning or explanation. To date Operation Hometown appears to have not been reactivated in spite of its demonstrated results (Robert Lee Maril, “CBP IA Operation Hometown reduces violence and corruption: Tomsheck shuts it down-Pt. 5, HSNW, 27 April 2015).
In addition to these documented allegations against CBP IA, there are also a number of additional allegations reported by the national media including sexual misconduct and “…intentionally misplacing employee complaints and bungling misconduct reports to mask its failure to curb employee wrongdoing” (Marissa Taylor, “Customs under fire for sweeping scans of employees personal data”, McClatchy Washington Bureau, 8 July 2014).
To his credit and reputation, the CBP IA under Tomsheck’s leadership without doubt made numerous attempts to correct corruption, violence, and mismanagement among CBP employees. Tomsheck’s insistence upon the use of the polygraph test for certain employees to the exclusion of others, along with the scientific demonstration of the unreliability of the polygraph, undoubtedly masked real accomplishments during his tenure at CBP IA. At the same time, the massive scale of the gross incompetence at CBP IA impacted thousands of individuals in and outside CBP and undoubtedly weakened national security efforts at the Mexican border. More to the point, are we really to believe that CBP senior leadership had both no idea that all this was going on at CBP IA and no hand in allowing it to continue?
Clean up?
These substantial and documented allegations about the CBP and CBP IA raise serious questions about a number of crucial issues that Morgan and his supervisors apparently failed to consider. To date miniscule resolution to these grave problems-as briefly delineated-do not measure up to the enormous scale of this unprecedented scandal exposing a variety of systemic issues at CBP IA and CBP. These systemic issues include not only the consequences of the leadership, policies, and programs of Tomsheck, but grave problems within CBP senior leadership who apparently sport Teflon suits.
While the public is left to believe that to date all has been completely fixed at CBP and CBP IA, at the visible tip of the bureaucratic iceberg stands Lieutenant Commander J. Gregory Richardson, the former Senior Security Analyst at CBP IA’s IPD. Richardson, an African American military veteran now with a 100 percent medical disability, also is the recipient of two Joint Service Commendation Medals as well as the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal. One award for Richard’s heroism while serving his country reads in part: “By his quick and selfless response to an evolving terrorist act, the threat to U.S. Navy Personnel and Property was mitigated…”
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Maryland), the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote a letter to the CBP on Richardson’s behalf. In this letter Thompson lists and documents two and one-quarter typed pages of specific allegations by Richardson against CBP IA, the documentation supporting those allegations, and a request to address in a timely manner Richardson’s on-going battle to receive the federal benefits due him by law after he was fired from his position at IPD.
In response Michael J. Yeager, the CBP’s assistant commissioner, Office of Congressional Affairs, responds:
“CBP takes allegations of employee misconduct very seriously and has instituted policies pertaining to abuses of authority. Complaints of unprofessional conduct are recorded, investigated, and appropriate action is taken against CBP officers who are found to have violated policy.” The CBP letter is dated 8 March 2013.
It is now June 2015. Lieutenant Commander J. Gregory Richardson (retired) still awaits justice.
Is this a true clean up by the FBI at CBP and CBP IA? Or is it something else?
Robert Lee Maril, a professor of Sociology at East Carolina University, is the author ofThe Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.-Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com.
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