Chihuahuan prisons achieve ACA accreditation, end self-regulation by convicts

Read a feature story and editorial from Corrections Today on the transformation of prisons in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which includes the city of Juarez across the river from El Paso and shares borders with Texas and New Mexico. Over the last four years, funded through US grants via the Merida Initiative, they've made the shift from "self-governed" facilities ruled internally by convicts to being accredited by the American Correctional Association, a task which took about three years to renovate all facilities and hire and train staff. Since then prison authorities have seized:

1,500 gallons of alcohol; 73 long guns; 32 explosive, fragmentation and blast grenades; 13,762 steel-edged weapons; and other prohibited items as of Oct. 1, 2014. These seizures were only the “tip of the iceberg,” because every single action also detected illegal acts inside the prisons, such as cockfights, musical performances and even horse racing. This reflected the unlimited power and control the criminal groups used to have inside the walls of [Chihuahan prisons], enough to even plan and order kidnappings, extortions and other crimes.

The self-governing internal economy of Chihuahuan prisons was legendary so news of ACA accreditation, to me, is stunning. The professionalization of Mexican corrections, if sustained, would be a huge development, especially if other states replicate Chihuahua's model. Change can't come too soon.

A happy, secondary benefit to marijuana legalization and the rise of American pot suppliers

Grits doesn't imagine voters in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, D.C., etc. who approved measures to legalize pot in recent elections were considering the global geopolitics of criminal organizations and their funding streams when they cast their ballots for recreational pot use. But the demand for legal pot may be squeezing bad guys from south of the border out of the market. According to Texas Public Radio, "Legal pot in the U.S. may be undercutting Mexican marijuana," reducing the base revenue stream to violent drug cartels. Who'da thought? Not all "unintended consequences" are negative!

Even outside states where pot has been legalized or decriminalized, the market is shifting to higher quality American product. The story included this local quote about the shift in suppliers for domestic marijuana markets: "'We're still seeing marijuana. But it's almost all the homegrown stuff here from the States and from Canada. It's just not the compressed marijuana from Mexico that we see,' says Lt. David Socha, of the Austin Police Department narcotics section."

'Do border surges work?' For incumbent pols, but not really the rest of us

The Austin Statesman on Sunday published an extended investigative piece on Texas' beefed up border security efforts and posed the simple but controversial question: "Do border surges work?" The article tracks several themes examined on Grits earlier this month about the lack of articulable goals or success metrics for an expensive, open-ended deployment which now includes not just Texas DPS but 1,000 National Guard troops, all of which so far is being paid for, un-budgeted, out of the state's general fund.

Government claims victory both when seizures go up and down, making the metric meaningless for evaluating whether taxpayer money is well spent funding "surge" efforts. The authors attempt to apply a normative analysis based on the facts and interests at stake and concluded there's little evidence Texas boondoggle border surges are helping the problems they're ostensibly aimed at resolving. All these troopers and soldiers arrive at the border with no obvious jurisdiction or meaningful role to play.

Still, the bottom line answer to "Do border surges work" is "Yes," though not for the reasons one might think. Certainly they're not thwarting illegal immigration, drug smuggling, nor maximizing the state's bang for the buck fighting crime. But those expectations misunderstand what's really going on with this latest round or border security spending.

Like its predecessors dating back to Operation Linebacker, recent surges by state and local law enforcement, much less by the National Guard, are nothing more nor less than expensive political theater. Border surges "work" not to reduce crime at the border but to allow Texas pols to claim they're "doing something" about the illegal immigration since Obama won't fix the problem. Never mind that their actions also won't fix the problem and may worsen it. Or that state leaders have prioritized a politicized "surge" over road maintenance. Or that a purely martial response ignores the real and immediate humanitarian crisis facing children from Central America who're piling up like kindling in Texas-based detention facilities. The meme plays well to portions of the GOP base and in the near term, to win an election, ginning  up the base matters a lot more than the truth. As long as that dynamic holds, we'll see more border surges because incumbent politicians have seen they "work,"  at least for purposes of political expediency, though not because they make us one iota safer.

What would it mean for border security to really "work"? Grits has argued in the past that any new border security funding should go first to pay for expanded Internal Affairs capacity (or maybe some sort of anti-corruption unit) to rein in bribery and collusion with drug runners among border law enforcement that contributes to the chronic, intransigent nature of the problem. Just paying overtime for more vehicle patrols, in the end, won't accomplish much.

Meanwhile, Politifact took on questions about a purported crime wave by "criminal aliens" touted by Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry to support the border crackdown. I'm not a fan of Politifact. I think their only two ratings with any real meaning are "True" and "Pants on Fire." But lo and behold, they gave a "Pants on Fire" rating to Gen. Abbott for asserting that about 3,000 murders in Texas could be attributed to lax border security, calling the claim "incorrect and ridiculous." They also gave a "Pants on Fire " rating to Gov. Perry for similar overstatements a couple of weeks prior for claiming a phony Mexican murder wave. Of course, in the real world immigrants - legal and undocumented alike - commit crimes at very low rates compared to American citizens. But one wouldn't want to let facts interfere with one's opinions, so instead we must witness the disgraceful spectacle of the state's top politicians bearing false witness to pander to the nativist wing of the GOP base.

Another, accompanying article from AP posed the question: "Lawmakers: Is beefed up border security worth it?" with the additional National Guard troops announced while I was out of town (in Mexico City, ironically), Texas is now spending $4.3 million per week out of un-budgeted general revenue to support DPS' and the National Guards' expanded presence, perhaps indefinitely. That's nearly a quarter-billion dollars per year if it goes on that long. I know people have short memories, but those who can recall at least back to the George W. Bush governorship should understand why sending soldiers to the border is as likely to end tragically as to improve things. 

Increasingly I wonder if much of the extra hype we're seeing about the border from state leaders isn't intended as a pre-emptive counter to House Speaker Joe Straus' stated desire to stop spending state highway money on DPS and spend it on roads and transportation instead. By getting him to commit to this extra spending before session even begins and Straus can appoint a new budget chair (Adios, Jim Pitts!), the Speaker seems to have been outmaneuvered, ensuring money from the state highway fund will continue to be siphoned to DPS, perhaps even in increased amounts. Col. McCraw and his allies knew better than to let a crisis go to waste and seized on the humanitarian plight of Central American kids to justify proposing a much more militarized southern border.

That's my best guess as to the larger chess match being played here, with all the overheated border security rhetoric that's dominated the public debate a convenient smokescreen for DPS and its allies hoping to stave off budget cuts if their highway money goes kaput. Now it's the Speaker's move. He can acquiesce, or insist after some respectable interlude that DPS prioritize and cut other spending in its budget to cover the cost. That'd be a Hail Mary, though. He'd need a strong Republican Senate ally (or a governor with line-item veto power) to pull himself out of the corner he's been backed into.

Regardless, that to me seems like the Speaker's only option, besides giving up his quixotic push to spend highway funds on highways before it ever properly got off the ground.

Border boondoggle: Lack of goal, success metrics, don't prevent squandering tax dollars

Image source

Texas has no valid plan or purpose for its recently announced $1.3 million per week commitment to expanding state trooper patrols along the border, judging from statements by Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott. From the Houston Chronicle (June 29):

Asked what a secure border might look like, Abbott said Sunday he didn't have a ready-made definition, but that achieving one was possible.

"If we can land people on the moon, if we can create iPhones and iPads," he said, "I think we can measure meaningful border security."

In other words, Greg Abbott doesn't know any more about how to secure the border than he knows about how to construct an iPhone or put a man on the moon.

So here we are: For the foreseeable future, Texas will spend $1.3 million more per week on border security than we did a month ago. But state leaders cannot identify an operational goal beyond meaningless platitudes (the goal is a "secure border" but Abbott can't define the term). And they cannot identify metrics to tell if the mission is a success or a failure (Abbott "thinks" it can be meaningfully measured but can't say how).

It's impossible to solve a problem one can neither define nor measure. Texas has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on similar border surges and by the state's own (often dubious) account, problems worsened. So why throw good money after bad? Any project where the government a) cannot define its goal, b) cannot measure success, and c) has pledged tens of millions of tax dollars ($67.6 million per year) with no end in sight, by definition qualifies as a big-league boondoggle in my book.

Surging toward Groundhog Day, and other stories

Here are a few items that deserve Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts:

Pointless 'surge': Waiting for the punchline
DPS' $1.3 million per week border surge IMO is a bad joke. Brandi Grissom must think it's Groundhog Day. How many "surges" have we witnessed in Texas since Operations Linebacker, Wrangler, etc.? What did they solve? And how will this one convince some teenager in Honduras not to begin the march northward fleeing oppression and poverty to come here for a job that Texas businesses want give him? The feds seem to have a more pragmatic response: bringing in emergency judges to process immigration cases. Maybe this would be a good time for the US Senate to fill some of Texas' empty federal judicial posts.

Eat This
A Tyler company admitted no guilt as it entered into a $392,000 settlement with the US Department of Agriculture after meat it sold as pet food wound up being fed to inmates at the federal Bureau of Prisons.

'Pregnant women in Texas county jails deserve better than this'
Horrific. From the Dallas News (June 26), "A federal lawsuit in Wichita Falls shines a spotlight on a dramatic example of how the opportunity for lifesaving medical intervention is often missed in county jails. In this case, a child was tragically lost." See the full, gut wrenching column coauthored by the Texas Jail Project's Diana Claitor and Burke Butler of the Texas Civil Rights Project.  

Arson and false convictions
As evidence that Texas' arson review has had national influence, check out this NBC piece on a Michigan man exonerated in an arson-murder case. It hails Texas as authoring "the most comprehensive overhaul of fire investigation in the nation" and holds up the state fire marshal's review of old cases as a model.

Weather litigation heating up with summer
The Dallas Observer has details from one of the lawsuits over excessive heat at Texas prisons focused on the Hutchins State Jail. Wrote Sky Chadde, "Larry McCollum's death received most of the press. McCollum was a 58-year-old Hutchins inmate -- in for a nonviolent crime -- who suffered a seizure after several 100-degree-plus days in a row. At the hospital, his body temp was 109.8 degrees. He fell into a coma and died six days later, from living in a place with high temperatures and no A/C. Lawyers from the Texas Civil Rights Project sued the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state's prison system. That lawsuit is still playing itself out, but now the department has another one on its hands." The story noted at the end that, "Recently, the AP reported that the criminal justice department is hoping to make seven state prisons a little more bearable by using large fans, like those football teams use to cool down on game days."

FBI to TX: Give our informant a PI license
Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman has the story of an FBI informant with impeccable references from his handlers who was nonetheless turned down for a private investigator license because of his criminal history.

Bad analogies and the Fourth Amendment
Here's hopeful assessment from Vox of the import of yesterday's SCOTUS decision that cell phones can't be searched incident to arrest. "The Supreme Court's new attitude is best summarized by a single sentence in the opinion. The government had argued that searching a cell phone is no different from searching other items in a suspect's pocket. That, the court wrote, 'is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.'" Much of the debate surrounding the Fourth Amendment in the 21st century hinges on bad analogies, the author argues.

Habeas corpus post-Guantanamo
The Stanford Law Review has a nice little summary of the effectuation of federal habeas corpus and due process rights in recent D.C.-circuit case law for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

There are also worthy, recent items at Texas Prison Bidness, Defending People, and The Defense Rests.

Roundup: Rogue cops and DWI news

Here are a few items that merit Grits readers' attention but haven't made it into independent posts this week:

Dallas settles another six-figure police lawsuit
This time for a no-knock raid resulting in excessive force. DPD thought the plaintiff was trafficking cocaine for a Mexican drug cartel, but all they found was .1 grams of cocaine and a sawed off shotgun; the defendant was never charged with a crime. This makes eleven six-figure lawsuits settled by DPD since 2011 totaling more than $6 million.

Ex-trooper, sheriff's deputy, constable candidate worked more than a decade as drug courier
In McAllen, "A former Texas state trooper and [Hidalgo County] sheriff's deputy pleaded guilty to money laundering Monday, two years after a traffic stop revealed more than $1 million in the trunk of his car." According to AP, "Robert "Bobby" Maldonado, who was running for constable in Hidalgo County at the time of his February 2012 arrest in Victoria County, spent about 12 years working as a courier bringing drug proceeds back to the Texas-Mexico border from the U.S. interior, according to prosecutors."

Man paralyzed after alleged excessive force by Round Rock PD
Reported the Killeen Daily Herald, "On March 21, a Florence resident was sitting in his car charging his phone when six Round Rock police officers tried to arrest him, according to court documents. Intoxicated and outside of Rick’s Cabaret in Round Rock, William Slade Sullivan, 44, now is a quadriplegic after the officers’ “extremely aggressive use of force,” one of his lawyers said."

'Fracking and the flow of drugs'
National Journal reports that the South Texas fracking boom has created new opportunities for drug smugglers thanks to massive, increased truck traffic north-bound from Mexico.

DWI dominates Harris County probation rolls
Reported the Houston Chronicle (May 11), "In 2013, about 13,000 people - half of all Harris County probationers - were on supervision for a misdemeanor driving-while-intoxicated conviction. Thousands more crowd county jails." Despite that, "A 2009 report found that 60 percent of traffic deaths in Harris County were alcohol related - twice the national average." Further, "Harris County has the highest rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities among large counties in Texas and, some years, the nation." Grits believes that's because they're focused on an enforcement-only approach and have utterly failed to confront potential structural solutions to DWI that would get more bang for the buck.

The Fourth Amendment and mandatory blood draws
After the US Supreme Court imposed Fourth Amendment warrant requirements on mandatory blood draws in McNeely v. Missouri, writes Houston attorney Paul Kennedy, Texas' implied consent laws related to mandatory blood draws were called into question "when the Supreme Court overturned a conviction in Aviles v. State and sent the case back down to Texas for a new trial in line with the holding in McNeely." The San Antonio Court of Appeals "held that neither the implied consent law, the mandatory blood draw provision of the Transportation Code nor the dissipation of alcohol justified a warrantless blood draw without a showing that an established exception to the warrant requirement existed."

In April, Texas' Seventh Court of Appeals, agreed in a case called Sutherland v. State, which according to the prosecutors' association held that, "By vacating and remanding a case from the San Antonio court of appeals, Aviles v. State, 385 S.W.3d 110, the United States Supreme Court has rejected any position that would treat Transportation Code §724.012(b)(3)(B) as an exception to the Fourth Amendment. To the extent that §724.012(b)(3)(B) can be read to permit a warrantless seizure of a suspect’s blood without exigent circumstances or consent, it violates the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement." Though TDCAA notes that the legal status of Texas' mandatory blood draws remains in doubt and "the State may ultimately lose the implied-consent argument under application or extension of Missouri v. McNeely," they advised prosecutors, "Do not spend too much time worrying about this decision. The dispute will be decided soon enough by a higher court (probably the Court of Criminal Appeals), and that court will take longer than one paragraph to analyze the issue."

'Putting cameras on police officers is an idea whose time has come'
A Washington Post editorial with the same title as this subhed lays out the central conundrum facing policymakers who want to install bodycams as a standard part of police officer gear: "Some thorny details need to be clarified before D.C. police go ahead with a pilot project. Chief among them is how and when the cameras are activated. If individual officers are allowed complete discretion, the cameras will be of little use; but if the cameras are rolling for an officer’s entire shift, problems will arise involving privacy and good policing. (Some informants will get cold feet if they know they’re being filmed, and victims of some crimes may be inhibited from providing testimony.)"

Ramped up enforcement along Texas border failed to raise drug prices

To understand the failure of the drug war in Texas, one need look no further than the opening few minutes of DPS Col. Steve McCraw's testimony yesterday to the Texas Senate Committee on Agriculture, Rural Affairs and Homeland Security.

According to McCraw, in the last three months local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have seized more than 350,000 pounds of marijuana in Texas' border region, as well as more than 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine, more than 125 pounds of heroin and more than 1,800 pounds of cocaine.

The logic behind drug interdiction is to remove illegal drugs from the market, making them more scarce. If successful, the tactic should increase the price of drugs. But the opposite is occurring. According to McCraw, in 2009 - which was the year DPS's souped up border security efforts began - the cost of marijuana was $551 per pound; today, it's $452 per pound. Cocaine was $29,000 per pound, he said; today it's $11,000 per pound. Meth was $37,988 per pound in 2009, said McCraw; now it's $14,866. Heroin was $40,000 per pound in 2009; now it's $21,534.

Think about what that means: According to basic principles of supply and demand, reducing supply should increase prices. But that's not what's happening. Despite Texas and federal agencies spending hundreds of millions of dollars to combat smuggling along the Texas-Mexico border, drug prices are getting cheaper, implying that supplies are expanding, not contracting.

Supply-side interdiction is not working, even for marijuana, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of drugs being captured by law enforcement.

Lauding the merits of a 21-day "surge," which was highly controversial in the Rio Grande Valley, McCraw, said the best solution is to "saturate high-visibility patrols where there are clusters of crime" between the checkpoints. He claimed the strategy resulted in radical reductions of smuggling during that period, insisting there's "no question it can be done."

To me, though, his testimony raises serious questions whether it can be done. For starters, most smuggling happens through the checkpoints, not in between them, as Sen. Juan Hinojosa pointed out. And just like when you squeeze a balloon, cracking down in one spot only causes smugglers to shift to other areas. Even if drug smuggling reduced significantly during that 21-day period in the area DPS "surged" - and for my part I find that claim suspect - there's no evidence the tactic reduced overall drug supplies. Indeed, it's clear that, over time, increased spending on law enforcement at the border has failed to reduce drug supplies, judging from the reduced drug prices McCraw cited.

'Dallas Buyers Club' concept metastasizes

Though it may sound like a spin-off of the Oscar-nominated movie Dallas Buyers Club, this PBS News Hour report about the black market in prescription drugs out of Mexico really has more to do with inflated pharmaceutical prices and the failure of states like Texas to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The story opens:

In borderland Texas, a widespread lack of health insurance is linked to poverty and high rates of diseases such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.

Cheaper prescription drugs to treat these conditions are available across the border in Mexico. But physicians and law enforcement are tracking a relatively new trend — the smuggling of medicine in bulk from Mexico to U.S. patients who no longer feel safe shopping for them in Mexico.

Mexican Pharmacist Jorge Sandoval says people who buy his medicines these days often buy for people they don’t even know.

“There’s a trade in legal prescription medication,” he said in Spanish from his shop in Chihuahua, Mexico, about an hour south of the border. “The trade is generated by people (in both countries) who want to buy medicine at a lower price. People are bringing in ice chests to fill with medicines that they sell to friends and relatives.”

About 24 percent of Texans have no medical insurance, the highest percentage of uninsured in the nation. And although Texas has some of the highest enrollments in the new health care marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act, the numbers represent a small fraction of the overall uninsured.

That’s one reason why, for years, people have crossed the border for cheaper medicine. The diabetes medicine Metformin is $35 a month here and $15 in Mexico. The blood thinner Coumadin is $60 a month here, $15 there.

But what’s new here is a cottage industry of smugglers buying medicines in bulk to bring back to the U.S.

In the movie Dallas Buyers Club, Matthew McConaughey's character sought out AIDS drugs from Mexico because of approval delays at the FDA. These days, the practice has become more common and generalized, with folks bringing everyday medications into the country illegally because of inflated prices barring access to medication by the uninsured.

When black markets occur for legal commodities - especially ones that don't get you high - it's an indictment of government-sanctioned oligopolies controlling distribution and price. Drug companies on the US side are making a fortune from this over-charging, subsidized by friendly government regulators and now gun wielding law enforcement officers. Don't police have anything better to do than arrest folks for getting legal, prescribed drugs to sick people who need them at a cost they can actually afford?

Deal with the Devil? DEA allegedly overlooked Sinaloa cartel drug smuggling for intel on rivals

Simultaneously shocking and also utterly unsurprising. According to a report by Business Insider:

An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels.

Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.

There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be "the world’s most powerful drug trafficker," coordinates with American authorities.

But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.

See the full BI story for more details. My Spanish isn't good enough to closely parse the El Universal story, and the Google translate version is pretty raw, so I'm looking forward to followup reports. Certainly, it's not uncommon for law enforcement to cut deals with criminals for information. But this story alleges the US conspired with the Sinaloa cartel at the very highest levels. A few years ago, American intelligence officials were telling the press that Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel appeared to be "winning" the bloody feud with its rivals for control of smuggling routes into the U.S.. What they didn't say was that Sinaloa was "winning" because the US government was helping them!

MORE: From Forbes. AND: A rebuttal from the Washington Post. AND: Paul Kennedy adds his two cents.

New Mexican highway system will expose flaws in border-security, supply-side drug interdiction strategies

So much of the "border security" talk we hear from Texas politicians falls on a range from trivial to stupid: E.g., calls to further enlarge the already bloated Border Patrol or insistence on building a wall along the border (which would make us perhaps the first ever nation to wall off our own residents' access to a major natural resource like the Rio Grande). Militarizing rural BFE Texas or walling off farmers and ranchers' access to water are such ridiculous suggestions that any sensible person truly interested in border security must oppose or else completely ignore them.

Sadly, American border security and immigration debates tend to focus on myopic, often anecdote-driven issues designed less to solve real-world problems than to amp up culture-war triggers. Those debates do not interest me. Grits has argued at least since 2006 that one of the biggest border security challenges facing the state (arguably number two behind southbound "spillover") was Mexico's decision to massively expand its interstate highway system, specifically to allow easy commercial access to the west coast, where major mountains and minimalist roads made travel times long and even treacherous. The United States has not built a new west-coast port in decades, but trade from Asia is expanding every year by leaps and bounds. Mexico made the (wise) strategic decision to build several new "super ports" on its west coast and to expand its highway infrastructure to position itself as a North American trade hub for Asian goods.

Now, a major superhighway cuts through the mountains in Sinaloa (home to one of the major Mexican cartels) and onto Mazatlan, a major western port, cutting travel times from the Texas border in half. (I'm actually kind of looking forward to driving it.) Highways through Mexico to Brownsville and Laredo have been similarly improved, specifically aimed at maximizing the ease and rapidity of moving commercial goods. A recent article from Southwest Farm Press ("Mexican superhighway challenges Texas preparedness," Sept. 4) depicts local officials struggling with the implications:

Officials in Mexico and Texas are applauding the aggressive highway project, pointing out that trucks servicing the rich agricultural district of Mexico will soon have a shorter and more direct route to Pharr/Brownsville than they do to the Arizona border, where border crossing facilities are already overcrowded.

South Texans have been gearing up for the influx of added Mexican commerce for several years, mostly along the Lower Rio Grande Valley corridor from McAllen to Brownsville. While the McAllen area has increased cold storage and traditional storage significantly over the last five years, the Lower Valley, specifically Brownsville, has been slower to respond, a measure Cameron County and Brownsville leaders say is quickly changing.

At a special meeting of the Brownsville/Cameron County Produce Committee earlier this month, County Commissioner Ernie Fernandez said the community is not ready for the major influx of freightliners expected in the weeks ahead.

"We're not ready...not even close to being ready," he told the committee. ...

USDA estimates confirm that since the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA) was adopted between Mexico and the United States, elevated commerce and traffic has risen significantly. In Texas land ports of entry alone the number of commercial crossings has doubled in just the last 8 to 10 years. In Laredo, for example, land crossing by commercial trucks increased by more than one million vehicles since 1995. In Pharr, statistics indicate more than 300,000 additional trucks have crossed during the same period.

In anticipation of increased wait times at the bridge, local Valley officials say they are hoping to purchase land soon for construction of a staging area adjacent to the Veterans Memorial Bridge crossing.

The story's mainly talking about handling the volume of traffic and goods, at one point estimating the importance of the new highways to be as significant as the construction of the Panama Canal. Mexico exports time-sensitive fruit and vegetable products through Texas, spreading from here across the entire country, and there can already be hours-long waits for inspection at the bridges during peak hours, creating the need for short-term cold storage solutions and other special accommodations for fresh produce.

However, one could say the same thing - "we're not ready" - about the border-security implications of Mexico's new ports and highways. In practice, the overwhelming majority of smuggling into Texas, both people and contraband, comes through the major checkpoints at the bridges. The rise of the maquiladora industry after NAFTA resulted in scores of US companies operating manufacturing plants on the Mexican side of the river aimed at distribution to the American market. Bilateral trade unquestionably benefits both Texan and Mexican economies. But it also masks most human trafficking and contraband smuggling to and from Mexico, and it's about to increase by an order or magnitude.

Building a wall out in the hinterlands or assigning more Border Patrol agents to stalk the brush along the river won't affect the trade situation in the least. And pity the US Customs folks responsible for vetting vehicles at the bridges. It's already physically impossible to check more than a tiny fraction without inhibiting legitimate trade in ways that violate both international treaties and our national interest.

This looming shift in international trade dynamics will utterly swamp Texas checkpoints in the next few years, making a farce of supply-side interdiction strategies that consistently failed to stop drug flows even at much lower volumes.

Roundup: Great writs, great walls, and a cautionary note on covering a great tragedy

Here are a few odds and ends that didn't make it into full blog posts but deserve readers' attention:

Judge shot to death in Corpus Christi
A Nueces County district judge was found shot to death in his chambers. Few details so far on possible perpetrators, motive, etc., or even whether it may have been a suicide. ¿Quien sabe? Grits would caution the press to beware of premature speculation. If the murder of the Kaufman County DA, his wife and another prosecutor earlier this year taught us anything about such high-profile episodes, it should be not to jump to conclusions. The press spent weeks hypothesizing that the Kaufman murders were attributable to everyone from the Aryan Brotherhood to Mexican drug cartels before it allegedly turned out to have been a former elected official angry about personal, political and legal disputes. Let's not repeat that pointless cycle of error and guesswork before the salient facts come out. UPDATE (7/17): Authorities are now calling the death a suicide.

Mental health funding got boost
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has a story detailing increases in mental health and drug treatment funding from the 83rd Texas Legislature. Unfortunately, the Lege did not direct any of it specifically to help solve competency restoration backlogs.

Profiling LaSalle Corrections
See Prison Legal News' profile of LaSalle Corrections, a family-run private prison firm out of Louisiana.

Fundamentals of private prison giant weak
Grits recently mentioned the report on Corrections Corporation of America from Anonymous predicting their economic demise. Well, here's another argument for shorting their stocik, this time from The Motley Fool.

Indoor cell-phone tracking
Stores are using indoor cell-phone tracking to generate data on consumers. The tactic also highlights how rapidly cell-phone location data is becoming super-accurate thanks to the proliferation of towers, antennae and femtocells.

Constitutionality and the meaning of metadata
Here are two perspectives on why collection of cell-phone metadata should be unconstitutional: One from libertarian constitutional expert Randy Barnett and another analyzing why Thurgood Marshall thought the entire "special needs" doctrine on which the program is based was bad law in the first place. Here's a basic primer on the current state of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence related to "metadata." For those who don't understand precisely what the government gets when it acquires "metadata" from your phone calls, this blog post lays it out nicely. MORE: At the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr makes the case for allowing NSA phone snooping under existing (IMO grossly flawed and denuded) Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. So much about that post irked me Grits may have more to say on the subject later. AND MORE: Randy Barnett responds to Kerr. FWIW, my gripe isn't with Kerr's analysis of 40-year old case law, which is accurate as far as it goes,  but his omission of political responses to the cases he cites and his implicit normative assumption that those cases from the '70s should be adapted and expanded to allow gathering data prospectively about millions of non-suspects

Border wall repeats one of 'history's great blunders'
So argue writers from The Atlantic, tracing the history of border walls and the fall of empires from China to the Roman Empire to Russia and Great Britain. Communication and partnerships are far more effective than physical barriers, which is why I'm glad to see the new mayor of Monterrey visiting Texas cities to exchange ideas about crime fighting efforts.

The Great Writ diminished
Here's an interesting item articulating how habeas corpus has been emasculated by restrictive legislation under the federal system. With a handful of exceptions, one could make the same case for state-level habeas writs, certainly in Texas. Sen. John Whitmire's SB 344 this session was one of the first expansions of habeas power in memory - nearly all legislation restricts its use rather than enabling it. Unfortunately, like much habeas discussion, the article is too focused on the death penalty. The real shame is that attempts to restrict habeas in death cases had reduced its value across the board, IMO with unforeseen, negative consequences.

'Language turned convict'
Ran across this nice essay on mediaeval thieves cant, a secret language of old ("cryptolect" is the formal term) that's recently making a comeback in British prisons. Via Bruce Schneier.

Drug war cash cow now a budget drain for Hudspeth County

Hudspeth County relies on the drug war as its main income source - not combating drugs smuggled from Mexico but mostly Americans caught with weed on I-10 at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca. But now that the feds won't cover county jail costs, the drug war is busting their budget. Check out this excellent story from the Center for Investigative Reporting. Here are a few notable excerpts.

In recent years, the busy immigration inspection station has put a severe financial strain on the county and, in the process, revealed the tough monetary consequences of America’s massive expansion of border security and the government’s strategy for curbing the nation’s supply of drugs and illegal immigration.

Despite its remoteness, the Border Patrol’s Big Bend sector, where Sierra Blanca sits, has seen small-time drug busts skyrocket in recent years. An influx of agents tripled the local sector’s manpower, making the agency by far the biggest law enforcement presence around.

The Border Patrol checkpoint rarely catches drug mules making their way from Mexico or border crossers hidden in trunks. Illegal immigration apprehensions in the Big Bend sector historically have been among the lowest along the border.

The Sierra Blanca station essentially has become an immigration checkpoint in name only, as the bulked-up Border Patrol has ensnared mostly Americans there – thousands of them.

Even as the U.S. Border Patrol makes more small-time drug busts, the U.S. Justice Department is generally declining to prosecute these low-level cases. The federal government has largely walked away from paying local authorities to pick up the slack.

Roughly 8 out of 10 people busted in the sector between 2005 and 2011 were Americans caught at a checkpoint, according to data obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting. A small fraction of those busts are referred to federal agencies for further investigation and possible prosecution. At the Sierra Blanca station, 88 percent of the seizures – mostly marijuana – were traffic stops for amounts below drug trafficking thresholds.

Remarkable story. Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, downstream, the New York Times reports that the Rio Grande Valley is the new "hotspot" for illegal immigration, though the number of apprehensions are less than a quarter of what they were at their height. See their story, framed in terms of the federal immigration bill debate.

Mexican amparo writ expands post-conviction rights beyond habeas

You learn something new every day. Grits has for some time been interested - in part out of professional necessity working for the Innocence Project of Texas - in the inner workings of the habeas corpus process in Texas, in other jurisdictions, and for that matter historically. However I was unaware before now that under Mexican law and in several other Spanish-speaking countries there is a post-conviction writ in addition to habeas corpus called the writ of amparo or el "Recurso de Amparo," which protects a separate and distinct category of rights. Mexidata.info published an item from the Mexican president's office promoting a revamp of the rules titled, "Mexico Outlines its New Writ of Protective Injunction Law." According to that source:

New GAO report on border corruption among federal customs agents

From a GAO report published earlier this month related to corruption in border security operations:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data indicate that arrests of CBP employees for corruption-related activities since fiscal years 2005 account for less than 1 percent of CBP’s entire workforce per fiscal year. The majority of arrests of CBP employees were related to misconduct. There were 2,170 reported incidents of arrests for acts of misconduct such as domestic violence or driving under the influence from fiscal year 2005 through fiscal year 2012, and a total of 144 current or former CBP employees were arrested or indicted for corruption-related activities, such as the smuggling of aliens and drugs, of whom 125 have been convicted as of October 2012. Further, the majority of allegations against CBP employees since fiscal year 2006 occurred at locations along the southwest border. CBP officials have stated that they are concerned about the negative impact that these cases have on agencywide integrity.

See related MSM coverage from Fox News, "Study finds corruption on rise among border agents, rep says security at risk," which included this tidbit from Texas Congressman Mike McCaul: "In fiscal year 2011 alone, the DHS Inspector General received almost 900 allegations of corruption from within CBP and ICE." 

Though unrelated to the Customs service, the corruption angle provides an opportunity to link to a remarkable story from the Houston Chronicle about a Houston PD cop caught laundering cartel drug money: "Ex-HPD officer faces 25 years for running drug money."

See also prior, related Grits posts:

Cutting off snake heads failing strategy for drug-war Hydra

Hercules battling the Hydra

Grits was fascinated to see a headline from last week in the LA Times declaring "Two-thirds of most-wanted Mexican drug lords are now in custody, dead" (Oct. 18). However, asked the Times, "have the captures or killings of cartel leaders helped stem the violence in Mexico or reduce the flow of drugs to the United States? Not significantly." Instead, "The death or capture of a cartel leader, analysts repeatedly argue, usually sparks infighting for succession among lieutenants and thus more bloodshed."

While depressing, this of course is hardly news. In 2007, the federal Government Accountability Office concluded that the strategy of targeting kingpins "does not appear to have significantly reduced drug trafficking in Mexico, [although] it disrupted the cartels’ organizational structure. However, the disruption caused by the removal of some of the leadership presented opportunities for other drug traffickers to take advantage of the changing balance of power, and, in particular, to gain control of important transit corridors leading to the United States, such as Nuevo Laredo. Such struggles led to increased violence throughout Mexico."

Five years and 30,000+ Mexican murders later, we're pursuing the same strategies with worse results than ever.

In Greek mythology, Hercules famously fought the Hydra - a massive snake with many heads - and discovered that when he cut off one head, two would grow back in its place, allowing the beast to inflict even more violence. Hercules eventually won by changing tactics, but drug warriors in the US and Mexico continue to hew to the same, failing strategies while mostly ignoring the white-collar money laundering infrastructure that feeds the snake and allows the "heads" to multiply.

Grits doesn't know whether it's possible to definitively "win" the drug war, but it's certainly possible to ignominiously lose it, which by any metric one cares to examine is what's going on now.

MORE (Oct. 26): From the Houston Chronicle's Baker Institute blog, see a related item on Mexican drug-war "kingpins."

GEO Group employees implicated in straw purchases of guns for cartel

Good heavens! Reported AP:

Six of the seven Laredo residents who pleaded guilty to illegally buying guns Monday worked at a federal detention center.

Federal prosecutors say the six worked at the Rio Grande Detention Center in Laredo. The center is privately managed by The Geo Group and holds federal detainees awaiting trial for the U.S. Marshals Service. The seventh was a close friend of one of them.

Prosecutors alleged that in 2011, the group acquired 16 guns, mostly semi-automatic rifles of the sort preferred by organized criminal groups in Mexico. In the purchases, they indicated they were buying the guns for their own use. However, they were being paid to buy them for someone else, a tactic known as straw purchases.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/09/10/4806787/6-detention-center-employees-guilty.html#storylink=cpy

Immigration roundup: Deportation facts and fears

As Grits prepares to moderate a panel tomorrow at UT-Austin's LBJ School on alternatives to pretrial immigration detention, several recent stories caught my eye that merit readers' attention.

First, from the New York Times, see "Record number of foreigners were deported in 2011, officials say" (Sept. 7), which reported that "Immigration agents deported 391,953 foreign-born people during the 2011 fiscal year, the department’s Office of Immigration Statistics reported. They included more than 188,000 people who had been convicted of crimes in the United States — an “all-time high” for such deportations, the report found." What's more:

In addition to formal deportations, last year Homeland Security Department agents expelled about 324,000 foreigners back to their countries without formal court proceedings, according to the report. Most were illegal immigrants who agreed to leave voluntarily after they were detained, rather than be removed by the authorities. 

According to the new figures, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is known as ICE, detained about 429,000 immigrants last year, another record.

At the Mexican border, reported the NY Times, "2011, the Border Patrol captured about 335,000 migrants trying to cross illegally, the lowest number since 1971, and the figures are continuing to drop. High rates of unemployment here and intensified border enforcement have discouraged many migrants from Mexico and Central America from attempting illegal crossings, officials said."

Relatedly, via the TM Daily Post, I ran across this Los Angeles Times story ("Deportees to Mexico's Tamaulipas preyed upon by gangs," Sept. 8) depicting what happens to some Mexicans who're sent back, pointing out that around one-quarter of deportees to Mexico are sent to the state of Tamaulipas, though most of them aren't from there. Criminal gangs have begun targeting them for kidnapping.  "In the [bus] station, gang members sidle up to migrants and ask questions. Those with deep ties to the U.S. are deemed secuestrable, or 'kidnapable.' Young migrants are potential recruits." According to AP, this summer "The U.S. government has halted flights home for Mexicans caught entering the country illegally" as a cost saving measure, though they may resume soon in a redesigned program.

Finally, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram republished an exceptional (and lengthy) story out of Washington state depicting pretrial detention policies for immigrants held on civil infractions, honing in on political machinations by the GEO Group to build a pretrial detention facility in Tacoma (while ignoring state environmental regulations) and an individual case of an undocumented immigrant, brought here 18 years ago by his parents, who was arrested for driving with a suspended license and who's been held for more than a year awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings. The story demonstrates in excruciating detail a factor Grits thinks is often under-emphasized: The extent to which immigration law is in many respects a complex subset of family law, implicating myriad familial relationships from the parents who first brought the fellow here to his ex-wife to whom (until his incarceration) he paid $900 per month in child support on behalf of their three children. The name of his oldest daughter: "America."

Global banks' role in money laundering probed, but mostly tolerated

A global bank awash in blood money from Mexico's drug wars was called on the carpet in Congress last week, but the episode only highlighted the relative futility of existing anti-money laundering efforts.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week released a massive report (large pdf) on money laundering and held a hearing on the subject, highlighting in particular massive alleged money laundering at HSBC, a $2.5 trillion bank based n London with global affiliates including in Texas. Here's a press release from the subcommittee, here's the hearing page.

David Cohen, Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, US Treasury Department (testimony here), told the subcommittee that, "by any estimate, the total amount of illicit money moved through and concealed within the U.S. financial system is massive—in the hundreds of billions"

"In one case, failure to effectively monitor foreign correspondent banking relationships with high-risk customers and file suspicious activity reports (SARs) resulted in the processing of $420 billion in cross-border financial transactions with thirteen high-risk Mexican casas de cambio from 2004-2007, through wire transfers, bulk cash and pouch and remote deposits, including millions of dollars subsequently used to purchase airplanes for narcotics traffickers." Said Cohen, "the United States government has instituted criminal fines and forfeitures totaling more than $4.6 billion in approximately 20 ... criminal prosecutions of financial institutions over the past 6 years."

Leigh Winchell, Assistant director of investigative programs, ICE (testimony here), updated the committee on a relatively new initiative based out of El Paso aimed at reducing bulk cash smuggling:

On August 11, 2009, [ICE] officially launched the National Bulk Cash Smuggling Center (BCSC), in cooperation with the El Paso Intelligence Center, as a 24/7 investigative support and operations facility. The BCSC has undertaken a full assessment of the bulk cash smuggling threat and developed a strategic plan to address the problem. By analyzing the movement of bulk cash as a systematic process, HSI develops enforcement operations specifically designed to combat the various methodologies currently employed by trafficking organizations. This targeted approach allows us to more efficiently and effectively utilize our interdiction and investigative resources.

Compared to the hundreds of billions being laundered, though, the bulk-cash center deals in small change: "Since its inception, the BCSC has initiated over 500 criminal investigations resulting in 132 seizures totaling $65.8 million. These investigations have culminated in 319 criminal arrests, 96 indictments, and 68 convictions in both Federal and state courts." The most significant federal effort against bulk cash smuggling, dubbed Operation Firewall, resulted in "6,700 seizures totaling more than $621 million, and arrests of over 1,400 individuals" over the last seen years - hardly a rounding error given the illegal drug industry's enormous gross revenue.

Winchell did mention a positive change in Mexican banking regulations:

One of the most significant developments in recent years was a change in Mexican banking regulations implemented in June 2010 that severely limits the amount of U.S. dollars that can be deposited within Mexican financial institutions. This change has ultimately proven to be a successful tool in combating drug trafficking and the TCOs that control the movement and smuggling of drugs by causing them to change how drug proceeds are laundered. We believe that as a result of this change, TCOs may seek to place these funds into U.S. financial institutions and then wire the proceeds back to Mexico.

So the new Mexican regs are expected to alter how money is laundered - perhaps routing the money through other countries - but nobody thinks it will prevent the practice. And of course, we must wait and see how rigorously those regulations are enforced.

Testimony of the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (see here) reminds us of charges of massive money laundering at Wachovia bank and gave a brief recap of the case. Wachovia paid $270 million in fines, penalties and forfeitures in 2010 after accepting more than $55 billion (with a "b") in laundered deposits.

The OCC found that Wachovia: (a) failed to implement adequate policies, procedures, or monitoring controls governing the repatriation of nearly $14 billion of U.S. dollar (USD) bulk cash for high risk casa de cambio (CDC) and other foreign correspondent customers; (b) failed to conduct monitoring of high volumes of monetary instruments flowing through the CDCs and other foreign correspondent accounts in the form of RDC products, consisting of nearly six million checks worth approximately $41 billion; (c) failed to conduct adequate levels of due diligence of high risk CDC and foreign correspondent customers; (d) failed to appropriately monitor traveler’s checks in a manner that was consistent with the bank’s policy limits over sequentially numbered traveler’s checks for high risk CDC customers; (e) failed to appropriately institute risk-based monitoring of the bank’s foreign correspondent customers, primarily as a result of placing too much emphasis on staffing considerations when setting alert parameters; (f) failed to file timely SARs involving suspicious transactions conducted through certain foreign correspondent accounts at the bank; and (g) failed to adequately report cash structuring activity from review of alerts generated in the bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit. After conducting a voluntary look back, the bank filed over 4,300 SARs involving suspicious transactions conducted through the bank by CDCs and high risk foreign correspondent customers.

Keep in mind that when banks launder money, they're not just clipping a small fee like the bulk-cash smuggler taking money to Mexico in a suitcase. Like other deposits, they're able to loan and invest that money as though it's their own. If Wachovia (which has since been purchased by Wells Fargo) earned greater than a one-half of one percent return on those illegal deposits, then they still made profit from the enterprise despite the fines and forfeitures. Such enforcement actions basically amount to an acceptable cost of doing business.

It was evidence from the Wachovia case, said the Comptroller, that led federal officials to begin investigating HSBC. Reported the UK Guardian, "HSBC continued to operate hundreds of accounts with suspected links to Mexican drug cartels, even after ... executives were told by regulators that HSBC was one of the worst banks for money laundering." The bank was singled out at the hearing not because they're the only ones engaging in such activities, but as a "case study." Who knows what's happening at other, similar institutions?

According to the report, "A senior HSBC executive told the Subcommittee that HSBC acquired its U.S. affiliate, not just to compete with other U.S. banks for U.S. clients, but primarily to provide a U.S. platform to its non-U.S. clients and to use its U.S. platform as a selling point to attract still more non-U.S. clients." In particular, HSBC bought a Mexican bank in 2002 which had virtually no anti-money laundering controls in place and treated it as a "low risk" affiliate until 2009. The bank does not closely apply anti-money laundering controls to transactions from countries with medium or low risk assessments.

Banking regulations enacted so far are inadequate to prevent the same thing from happening again. Said the subcommittee report, "the money laundering risks associated with correspondent banking have not been eliminated. Correspondent accounts continue to provide a gateway into the U.S. financial system, and wrongdoers continue to abuse that entryway."

It's worth mentioning that HSBC's compliance failures went beyond Mexico, Latin America and the drug trade. "From 2001 to 2007, HSBC affiliates sent almost 25,000 transactions involving Iran worth over $19 billion through HBUS and other US accounts, while concealing any link with Iran in 85 per cent of the transactions." The bank proactively deleted references to Iran from documents, presumably to conceal the transactions from regulators.

Like Wachovia before it, Grits suspects HSBC will receive a relative slap on the wrist, at most, probably as part of a deferred prosecution agreement which prevents individuals involved from being held accountable. So HSBC's shareholders take a minor hit, but that was more than made up for by profits made from illicit deposits and money transfers over the last decade.

Ironically, HSBC was one of the few global banks that did not experience a major liquidity crisis in 2008: Perhaps now we know why.

Fast and Furious, Rick Perry's chutzpah, and the politics of executive privilege

Governor Rick Perry today compared Barack Obama to Richard Nixon for using executive privilege to conceal documents in Congress' "Fast and Furious" investigation, which takes a lot of chutzpah considering Perry's record on transparency.

Said Perry to CBS' Bob Scheiffer, "If this President over the past three and a half years had made any effort to secure the border instead of running operations like Fast and Furious ..." then he trailed off into his Nixon comparison without finishing the thought. It's a bizarre framing of the issue since the Obama Administration has beefed up border security (a buildup, incidentally, that this blog has criticized) more than any time since Woodrow Wilson sent the Army there in 1916.

Grits must admit, I'm befuddled at how ineptly the Obama Administration has handled the "Fast and Furious" investigation by Congress. In politics, it's often not the act itself that gets you in trouble but the coverup. The politically smart thing to do would have been to release everything, continuously point out the bungled undercover operation was planned and launched during the Bush Administration, fire an ATF administrator or three, and put the issue as quickly as possible in the rearview mirror. The most logical reason for NOT doing that is in fact the one cited by Attorney General Eric Holder and dismissed out of hand by his partisan critics - the possibility of revealing undercover agents and sources. (Ironically, President Bush used executive privilege in order to cover up the outing of an undercover agent, while Obama is now being criticized for using it to keep operatives from being outed.)

To be clear, there's no doubt that Fast and Furious was one of the most screwed up undercover operations ever, with the ATF targeting cartel operatives who were also paid FBI informants. And it was a bipartisan screwup, spanning administrations. Once hundreds of deaths, including a US Border Patrol agent, were linked to guns lost in the operation, the boondoggle reached epic proportions.

But there's more than a little irony when folks like Rick Perry who pound on "border security" themes make such attacks. Mules caught smuggling drugs north or guns south are the lowest folks on the cartel totem pole, and arresting them barely makes a dent in the problem: For every mule arrested at a border checkpoint two more crop up to take their place. So if you want to go after the big fish - actual cartel leaders - the only way to do it is through long-term, large-scale undercover operations like Fast and Furious. And such operations must offer the cartels something to justify the risk: Guns, shipment protection, money laundering services, or what have you. Otherwise, why would they let an undercover operative near them?

A small portion of the public favors full-on drug legalization (for marijuana, now a majority). But if one believes the drug war should be prosecuted - if you believe the US government should be targeting drug cartels through law enforcement - I don't see any other way but long-term undercover ops like Fast and Furious. Inevitably, some of those will fail, just like the military has often failed to stop violence in Afghanistan despite their best efforts. But should they not try? Would it have been better if they'd remained paralyzed by fear of failure? And importantly, does anyone believe that without Fast and Furious, Mexican drug cartels would have been unable to buy guns and kill people with them? I certainly don't.

Ironically, Governor Perry and other Fast and Furious critics are adopting arguments normally bracketed to supporters of gun control. A common refrain from the NRA and gun-rights advocates - in the past including Governor Perry - is that guns don't kill people, people kill people. The same is true in the case of the Border Patrol agent and others killed using guns from Fast and Furious: The cartels are responsible for the people they kill, not the Obama Administration. Or, if Perry et. al. believe suppliers of guns are to blame, it's hard to understand why the same logic doesn't undermine their domestic stance on gun rights. Perhaps discomfort with that strange repositioning is behind the almost bizarre accusations by some conservatives that Fast and Furious was intended (by the administration and a shadowy cabal of gun control advocates) to fail, blow back, and thereby give Americans cause to enact stronger gun-control laws. That nutty idea is spreading in large part because there's been no real information released to counter it.

I for one hope for a quick about-face from the Obama Administration. Release as much information as possible to the general public without putting undercover operatives at risk, and release everything else under the usual confidentiality requirements for Congressional oversight of national security. Then, like gawkers slowing down on the highway to look at a car crash, we can all see the mess for ourselves and move on to our day jobs.

Spillover corruption: Texas companies laundered bribes to Mexican politicos

Grits continues to maintain that the most significant "spillover" of violence and corruption along the Texas-Mexico border, at least so far, happens north to south. Most recently, reported the Wall Street Journal ("Mexican businessman charged in Texas with money laundering," May 24), a federal indictment alleged that "an array of corporate entities in Texas" laundered money used to bribe "elected officials and political candidates in Tamaulipas," the Mexican state across the river from Brownsville whose northern and eastern borders are defined by the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexico. Said the Journal: