SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Three on-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers accused of allowing vehicles with undocumented individuals to pass through their lanes into the U.S. without inspection at the San Ysidro Port of Entry face multiple charges.
Farlis Almonte, 38, of San Diego; Ricardo Rodriguez, 34, of Tijuana, Mexico; and Kairy Stephania Quiñonez, 31, of Imperial Beach, have all been charged with conspiracy to bring in aliens for financial gain and bringing in aliens for financial gain, aiding and abetting, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release Tuesday.
The three CBP officers allegedly “revealed their lane assignments and hours they were scheduled to work the primary inspection booths at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, so that co-conspirators would know when it was safe to transport undocumented individuals across the border with impunity — sometimes using code words to gain admittance,” according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges the defendants falsely reported into the Transportation Enforcement Communications System database the number of occupants in the co-conspirators’ vehicles “to conceal the fact that those vehicles contained undocumented individuals.”
Almonte and Rodriguez, both of whom have also been charged with receipt of bribes by public official, allegedly failed to enforce the immigration laws of the U.S. by allowing vehicles with undocumented immigrants to enter the U.S. in exchange for money, per the indictment.
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