EVEN BACK IN 2014, MARIL SAW CARTELS CORRUPT LAWMEN

By Robert Lee Maril
 While the American media devotes much time and effort to pinpointing the violence and corruption generated by the drug cartels in Mexico, far less attention is devoted to crimes in this country which are a direct result of these same criminal organizations.
The corruption of American law enforcement has become a significant problem along the border.
The Mexican drug cartels which control drugs and human smuggling are directly responsible for a spiraling level of violence and crime which instills fear among residents on both sides of the border even as it lowers the quality of life for all who call the U.S.-Mexican borderlands their home.
While the American media devotes much time and effort to pinpointing the violence and corruption generated by the drug cartels in Mexico, far less attention is devoted to crimes in this country which are a direct result of these same criminal organizations.
A case in point is the Panama Unit in south Texas.
A street-level task force created by Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino in 2009, one unit leader was the son of the police chief of the city of Hidalgo along with Mission police detective Johnathon Trevino, Sheriff Lupe Trevino’s own son.
Also included were members of the Mission police department who, along with other members of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Crime Stoppers unit, began guarding drug loads for known traffickers. Another member of the Panama Unit was Mission police department’s Alexis Espinoza, the son of Chief Rudy Espinoza who is head of the Hidalgo police department.
For more than three years the Panama Unit provided protection for drug traffickers and, at the same time, stole drugs from these same smugglers as they made a mockery of law enforcement along the Mexican border (Ildefonso Ortiz, “Feds Arrest Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Commander,” The Monitor, 24 December 2013)).
Witnesses said that the son of the Hidalgo County Sheriff and the son of the Hidalgo’s police chief both believed they were invulnerable to arrest for their crimes because of their fathers’ status in local law enforcement. Charges were finally brought against the Panama Unit when Miguel Flores, in the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department wore a wire for the FBI (Melissa del Bosque, “Exclusive: The Man Behind Hidalgo County’s Biggest Law Enforcement Scandal,” Texas Observer, 28 May 2013). Recently demoted from his position in law enforcement, Flores believes that Sheriff Lupe Trevino is punishing him for providing information which led to the arrest of the Sheriff’s son. Officer Flores filed a whistleblower’s lawsuit against Sheriff Lupe Trevino. Also arrested, after nine former members of the Panama Unit pleaded guilty, was Jose Padilla. Padilla is the former Commander of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s office, Sheriff Trevino’s second in command. He is accused of protecting drug traffickers from rival gangs as they smuggled and distributed illegal drugs throughout Hidalgo County.
(Treviño later pleaded guilty to charges he took campaign took from the drug trafficker, Tomas “El Gallo” Gonzalez of rural Weslaco and was sentenced to five years in prison followed by two years of supervised release and a $60,000 fine.)
Commander Padilla is described as, “…a ruthless enforcer who forced (Sheriff) deputies to bring cash to him for political purposes…” in a county which is one of the poorest in the country.
While Lupe Trevino staunchly maintained his innocence and stated he was not aware of the illegal activities of his Panama Unit, corruption in the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office runs very deep. Former Hidalgo Sheriff Brig Marmolejo served time in prison for his participation in drug-related crimes.

Former Sheriff Conrado Cantu, who was the head of law enforcement in adjacent Cameron County, was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison without parole for accepting bribes from drug traffickers, laundering drug money, and related crimes which included accepting $10,000 to protect a drug smuggler.
The presiding judge in Sheriff Cantu’s trial characterized the defendant’s crimes as, “…egregious activity that only served to promote the illegal narcotics trade.” (Robert Lee Maril, The Fence, pages 54-55; and Sergio Chapa, “Cantu Sentenced to 24 Years,” 14 December 2006, McAllen Monitor, p. 1.)
Another alarming example of increased violence among border law enforcement is the recent kidnapping and sexual assault of three females who illegally crossed the Rio Grande near Mission in March, 2014.
A Customs and Border Protection agent, Esteban Manzanares, has been identified by the victims and by film surveillance in the case now being investigated by the FBI. Agent Manzanares, who committed suicide before he was about to be arrested in his apartment where he took one of his victims, is accused of detaining these three women, including two teenagers, as they sought to surrender to authorities.
Agent Manzanares stands accused of taking these women to an isolated area where he slit the wrists of the mother of one of the victims, assaulted one of the teenagers, then took the remaining teenager to his apartment in nearby Mission. (Juan Carlos Llorca, FBI: Dead Border Agent Suspected in Kidnapping, Associated Press, 13 March 2014).
Several days after the assaults and kidnapping, Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, apologized for Manzanares’ crime saying, “I am deeply sorry that this incident occurred and am committed to doing everything in my power to prevent incidents like this from occurring again.” (Ildefonso Ortiz, “After Immigrants attacked, CBP chief apologizes, Reps. Cuellar and Castro chime in, civil rights attorney slams Border Patrol, The Monitor, 14 March 2014).
CBP Agent Manzanares joined the Border Patrol in 2008 during a time when Congress mandated a rapid increase of agents from a modest number of about 4,000 to the present 23,000. The professional training for all new agents at the Border Patrol academy was reduced from six months to just fifty-three days allowing little time to develop the professional law enforcement skills of all CBP agents who received less than two months of classroom and field experience in immigration law, Spanish, and weapons training.
The Panama Unit and the crimes against three Honduran females by a CBP agent in south Texas are symptomatic of border violence and corruption with direct ties to illegal drugs and human trafficking. The corruption of American law enforcement has become a significant problem along the border. The Mexican drug cartels which control drugs and human smuggling are directly responsible for a spiraling level of violence and crime which instills fear among residents on both sides of the border even as it lowers the quality of life for all who call the U.S.- Mexican borderlands their home.

(Robert Lee Maril, a professor of Sociology at East Carolina University is the author of The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.-Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com. He can be reached at E-mail: marilr@ecu.edu)