THE BORDER REPORT

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who headed a major Arizona office and then was assigned to work in Guadalajara for three years was arraigned in federal court Friday morning, accused of trafficking cocaine and selling information about law enforcement operations to a drug cartel.

Richard Padilla Cramer was a federal agent for nearly thirty years, first joining the U.S. Customs Service in 1981. He is accused of negotiating cocaine shipments from Panama to Spain while he was working for ICE out of the Guadalajara office, according to the criminal complaint filed against him by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

Cramer was well-known and respected in Southern Arizona where he worked as a local cop and then headed the ICE office in Nogales as the resident-agent-in-charge before leaving to his Mexico assignment. Before becoming RAC, Padilla worked in internal affairs for ICE and once taught ethics courses at the El Paso Intelligence Center. Sources within Homeland Security say Padilla hired two agents to work alongside him in internal affairs for ICE.

Padilla invested $15,000 to $25,000 in one shipment of some 660 pounds of cocaine. He is also accused of selling confidential information from law enforcement databases to an unidentified drug cartel. Charging documents show that he sold one one database query from the DEA for $2,000.

Padilla is well known in the Nogales area. He left Nogales in 2004, said ICE spokesman Vincent Picard. He worked in Mexico until he retire in 2007. Until last week, Padilla was employed by the Santa Cruz County Detention Center. He took the job in May and went through the Correctional Officers Training Academy in Tucson, said Ramon Romo, executive assistant to the sheriff.

“He was given a citation for his professionalism upon his graduation from CODA,” said Romo, adding, “This is very uncharacteristic.”

Romo, who worked with Cramer when Cramer was a dispatcher and later a deputy with the sheriff’s department from 1976-79, said he did not know the particulars of the case.

He said the file obtained by his department on Cramer’s background during the interview process for the detention department “has nothing but good stuff; nothing detrimental.”

“I have mixed feelings; I feel bad for him and for his family. This has to be very hard. I hope he gets out of this one," Romo said.

Romo said Cramer went to work in September 1979 for the Nogales Police Department and in 1981 joined U.S. Customs.

Sheriff Antonio Estrada said Cramer was “well known and respected. He was a local resident that went on to do well in his career. While he has not been convicted and we are not sure how this will end, there is certainly a feeling of betrayal.

“This just goes to show we all have to be mindful and watchful for the long tentacles of the drug trade, which tend to try to creep into every agency, local, state and federal.”

At his arraignment hearing Friday morning, Padilla's family tried unsuccessfully to post $7,500 for his bond. One high-priced criminal defense attorney walked out of the hearing when it became evident the family had nothing to pay him with. At least one familymember is also an ICE agent.

A border resident most of his life, Cramer holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico and the judge denied his release saying Cramer could easily leave the U.S. and revoke his citizenship making extradition back to this country more difficult.

According to the complaint, the case began with four snitches working for the DEA. A snitch within a Mexican cartel, the indictment doesn't specify which, was negotiating the sale of 660 pounds of coke from Panama City, Panama, to Vigo, Spain. A second snitch reported that Padilla and a fourth man were part of the job and had put up $450,000 to make the run. That second snitch was popped in South Florida and turned over four law enforcement database queries Cramer had given him. At that point, he only knew him as "Richard." Richard gave him four DEA database queries, one ICE and two California law enforcement queries. Apparently he was giving them confidential informants and had been asking DEA agents to run the queries on their system as part of a drug investigation he was working.

The coke shipments were made to Panama in March 2007 where undercover Panamian police officers observed the transaction. The coke was put on a Greek-flagged ship and sent north, stopping in Georgia, Virgina and finally, the Port of New York two weeks later. The cocaine made it to Vigo, Spain, where five members of the cartel were arrested. (This makes me think Padilla was working with the Gulf Cartel since they've been so busy busy in Europe over the past two years.)

Padilla and the head of the trafficking organization had a fight over how the 300 keys were lost in Spain and though he severed ties with that man, he continued talking to another member of the group who was later arrested in the U.S. That snitch, the fourth man, told the Feds he spoke with Padilla by push-to-talk. On Aug. 19, the Feds tracked down the number to Padilla's home address in Green Valley, Ariz.

Padilla is the second scandal ICE has been dealing with