(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Three Customs and Border Protection officers are facing federal charges after allegedly allowing vehicles packed with illegal aliens to pass freely through the San Ysidro Port of Entry while on duty.
Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that the officers—Farlis Almonte, Ricardo Rodriguez and Kairy Stephania Quiñonez—provided their lane assignments and work schedules to co-conspirators in a brazen scheme to smuggle illegal aliens through the port.
The trio even used “code words” to signal to the vehicles to pass through with impunity. Even more troubling, the officers allegedly falsified reports about the number of vehicle occupants to conceal the presence of illegal aliens.
Almonte and Rodriguez are charged with accepting bribes as public officials, meaning they took money in exchange for failing to enforce federal immigration law.
Each defendant also faces charges of conspiracy to bring in illegal aliens for financial gain, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and aiding and abetting, which carries up to 15 years with a five-year mandatory minimum.
The bribery charge alone carries a maximum sentence of 15 years.
The charges were made possible through a joint investigation by the DHS Office of Inspector General, Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations, and Border Patrol.
It is still unclear how many illegal aliens were smuggled through the border in the scheme—or how long each officer had been employed by the federal government.
The charges come as President Donald Trump unleashes his tough-on-illegal-immigration agenda, vowing to reverse the chaos caused by the Biden administration’s open-border policies.
