THE BORDER REPORT

Well this is a certainly a first. An agent with the U.S. Office of Inspector General was fired recently for lying on his affidavits, sources say. The agent is now under criminal investigation by his own agency. I won't name the guy because he hasn't been charged (and those of you know won't either unless you want me to end up in a ditch outside some muddy FEMA camp).

The OIG is the agency charged with investigating waste, fraud and abuse by other agencies. The agency assigns agents to investigate the other federal agencies, here in Arizona for example, a handful of OIG agents are responsible for the 3,000-odd Customs and Border Protection agents running around the state.

With that in mind, was the agent lying on his affidavits to protect corrupt federal agents within Homeland Security? If that's the case, are there other corruption cases coming down the pipe? Or was he lying to invent charges against federal agents? And if so, why?

Finally, I always wonder why defendants who've been popped by agents turning out to be corrupt don't ever speak up, pointing at the lack of credibility in their own cases. We've had some very high-profile corruption cases this year along the border, from the former head of DEA Phoenix and Miami to the veteran 20-year agent ICE working the border and Guadalajara. But no defense lawyer that I know of has yet to step up claiming these corrupt agents wrongly arrested their clients in the past.

In recent years, the ever-growing Border Patrol has pumped up its own Office of Professional Responsibility, trying to wrest internal affairs powers away from OIG and into its own agency. Of course, both investigative agencies use former CBP employees as investigators but I know a few OIG people and they seem a decent sort and fairly aggressive in their jobs.

We'll see what happens with this individual.