THE BORDER REPORT

Not that one, the other one. No, not that one either. The one in Laredo.

Carlos X. Carrillo, the U.S. Border Patrol chief of Laredo Sector “hastily” retired last week and nobody is saying why. But in his resignation letter, Carrillo gives much indication that he was pushed out, apparently expected some people in his former agency to back him up and found himself standing very, very alone.

You may remember Carrillo. Last year, he received the dubious distinction of drawing retired Congressman Tom Tancredo’s fire when he declared that the Border Patrol’s job is not to stop illegal immigrants or narcotics, but to protect the country against terrorism. Apparently we’d had it wrong all along.

Clearly, Carrillo is leaving under some sort of pressure. In his resignation letter, addressed to “those who matter,” he writes:

“I have not addressed this message to anyone who is more interested in appearance than substance, and who for self-serving reasons will relent to hierarchal [sic] pressure and remain silent out of fear of being perceived as disloyal.”

Carrillo’s 26-year career in the Border Patrol was not without further contention.

In 2005, the U.S. Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative arm that protects whistleblowers, criticized Carrillo, accusing him and others of sitting on allegations that 45 Border Patrol employees in southern Arizona were participating in a kickback scheme in the Patrol’s Tucson Sector.

The case, essentially a low-level fraud investigation, started in 2000 when the Patrol flooded Tucson Sector with more than one thousand out-of-area agents. The agency issued per diem checks to the agents and let them find their own housing. Given enough cash, displaced federal agents and low income areas, the predictable happened. Everyone smelled opportunity. Soon enough, a federal investigation found landlords were giving agents cash rebates while the agents were inflating their rent receipts. In some cases, the landlords were also Patrol agents. Other landlords were agency officials.

Carrillo, according to the investigation, told one of the two whistleblowers that he wouldn’t be considered a “team player” if he kept complaining and told the guy to mind his own business.

No higher-ups were ever punished and in fact, Homeland Security told the Special Counsel that punishing high level officials would be an “administrative burden.”

By the time the Special Counsel released its report, Carrillo was already in Washington working for Border Patrol Chief Aguilar. The second man accused in the investigation, Carrillo’s counterpart, Rowdy Adams, also left to Washington. In the report, Adams and Carrillo told the whistleblower that if he wanted to move up in the agency he had to get along and drop his complaints.

In November 2008, Adams was named Deputy Executive Director of Homeland Security’s Strategic Border Initiative, the tower project that was sold to the Boeing Company in 2006. The project was rife with problems from the start and is estimated to cost $10 to $30 billion by the time it is completed.

Good times all around. It’s like I always say; on this border, everybody’s making money …