The DOJ drops case in Border Agent sting

This border patrol agent sounds like he is innocent and got set up. To read the statements and circumstances quoted in the article, it sounds certain.

A federal judge dismissed money-laundering and corruption charges against Customs and Border Protection agent Lauro Tobias Tuesday in response to dismissal motions from both the Department of Justice and Tobias’ attorney, which were filed within hours of each other July 25.

Tobias, a 10-year veteran of the CBP who also served in the Air Force for two decades, was arrested in March 2013 after he took a trip from Phoenix to Las Vegas for a drug deal

The agent said he knew nothing of the purpose and of course, they all say that.

Except this time it looks different because everyone but him were cops in this whole situation. The story says the actions of the Justice Department were abrupt too.

But, based on court documents, the drug deal wasn’t real: Everyone involved, aside from Tobias, appears to have been a part of a federal task force that has been attempting, with little success, to root out corruption within the Border Patrol along the Arizona-Mexico border.

Source

Haven't many top military commanders and others been found in odd situations and removed or prosecuted for cause in recent years? Could some of them have been set up too?

This is so strange to see. Almost like an internal purge of morale.

What is truly strange is people saying, when the system actually works as intended for once, that THAT is strange.

I find his assertion that he believed his services were required for a "legal" transaction and that he didn't know drugs were involved, difficult to believe. So it may be as the DOJ claims, they want to protect information on their sting operation, or he has other information he's supplying to them in exchange for them dropping the case. This guy may turn up "suicided" in the not too distant future.

a reply to: Bilk22

Could it be they are having so much trouble finding corruption because they have to invent some for it to exist?

That sounds silly, I know and there have been some serious criminal cases come out of the Border Patrol. Every law enforcement group has it's criminals who slipped through screening somehow or just never showed their true colors.

Ongoing corruption though? Where do CBP agents see much opportunity, alone and able to be corrupt about things outside the worst of the job for intercepting illegals in the desert? Every gesture they make in the crossing stations where real money and drugs are around to be corrupt about is recorded from a half dozen cameras.

Customs and Border Patrol does seem to be the least favorite of both this and the past administration though, so it makes a warped kind of sense for why they might go after what appears to be their own. Not everyone in Government may be working on the same page, or even the same book sometimes?

originally posted by: MrCynic
a reply to: Bilk22

Could it be they are having so much trouble finding corruption because they have to invent some for it to exist?

That sounds silly, I know and there have been some serious criminal cases come out of the Border Patrol. Every law enforcement group has it's criminals who slipped through screening somehow or just never showed their true colors.

Ongoing corruption though? Where do CBP agents see much opportunity, alone and able to be corrupt about things outside the worst of the job for intercepting illegals in the desert? Every gesture they make in the crossing stations where real money and drugs are around to be corrupt about is recorded from a half dozen cameras.

Customs and Border Patrol does seem to be the least favorite of both this and the past administration though, so it makes a warped kind of sense for why they might go after what appears to be their own. Not everyone in Government may be working on the same page, or even the same book sometimes?

My point was, the guy is a law enforcement officer and ex-military. He knows what is right and wrong and what looks like a grey area. He's not some gullible neophyte. I don't know all the particulars, but traveling to a location to strike a deal of an unknown substance, should have sent up red flags and made him, at the very least, stay away and really, he should have alerted the FBI on his own that there could possibly be a shady deal going down.