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DEATH OF AN INFORMANT El Paso police say ICE steered detectives away from a suspect in the murder of Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana. |
Immigration agents’ conduct questionable
Concerns raised about how US agency operates
EL PASO - One immigration agent was accused of running an Internet pornography business and enjoying an improper relationship with an informant. Another let an informant smuggle in a group of illegal immigrants. And in a third case, an agent was investigated for soliciting sex from a witness in a marriage fraud case.
These troubling misdeeds are a sampling of alleged misconduct by personnel with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency seeking to carve out a bigger role in the deadly border war against Mexican drug gangs.
According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, immigration agents have blundered badly in their dealings with informants and other sources, covering up crimes and even interfering in a police investigation into whether one informant killed another.
At least eight agents have been investigated for improper dealings with informants since the agency was created in 2003, and more than three dozen others have been investigated for other wrongdoing, the records show.
The heavily redacted documents detail how one agent failed “to report murders . . . to her supervisor’’ and how another failed “to properly document information received from a confidential source in violation of ICE policy and procedure.’’
In the case involving one informant charged with the murder of another, Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galeana, a smuggling manager for the Juarez cartel, was gunned down last spring.
El Paso police say ICE delayed its investigation, steering detectives away from the man now charged with arranging the contract hit.
Kelly Nantel, an ICE spokeswoman in Washington, said in an e-mailed statement that the agency “works with confidential informants in accordance with established best practices and guidelines of federal law enforcement agencies.’’
The statement noted that the agency fired an agent last year for “negligence in performing his duties, misdirecting funds, and submitting false documents’’ in relation to his work with an informant.
Also, an immigration agent in Miami was sentenced to two years in federal prison and resigned from the agency earlier this year as part of a plea deal for accepting gifts from an informant.
Immigration officials in El Paso have repeatedly declined to comment on the Gonzalez case, but John Morton, Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for ICE in Washington, said, “I’m aware of that situation and it is under review.’’
He declined to answer other questions.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
