U.S. Border Patrol officer is charged with smuggling migrants from Mexico to Texas
- A U.S. Border Patrol agent was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on May 21 and charged with 'transporting undocumented individuals for private gain"
- The officer, who is assigned to the Laredo Sector, was suspended indefinitely following his arrest last Friday
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agent has been on duty since 2008
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been charged with smuggling migrants across the United States-Mexico international borderline, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Wednesday.
The border officer was arrested last Friday after a grand jury indicted him for 'transporting undocumented individuals for private gain.'
CBP said the Border Patrol agent was assigned to the Laredo Sector and had been on duty since 2008.
The agent, whose name was withheld, has been indefinitely suspended.
A Laredo Sector Border Patrol stands by the side of a steel border fence along the southwestern international line where officers rescued 24 individuals being smuggled in a truck near Freer, Texas, on October 12, 2020
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Details regarding how long the Border Patrol agent was ferrying undocumented individuals were not released.
'(CBP) stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission and expects officers and agents to adhere to the oath they take to uphold and enforced the laws of this country,' the agency said in a statement.
CBP did not state what the agent's maximum jail term will be if he is found guilty.
DailyMail.com reached out to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas for comment.
Agents with the U.S. Border Patrol Laredo Sector process a group of more than 40 migrants who were found inside a tractor-trailer Wednesday morning during a checkpoint on Interstate 35 in Laredo, Texas
The criminal charges were filed just one day after a former CBP agent in Laredo pleaded guilty to assisting an undocumented immigrant from Mexico enter the United States and employed her as her nanny.
Rhonda Lee Walker, 40, admitted in a signed plea agreement that while she was a Customs and Border Protection officer on January 2, she used another officer's computer login information to help the woman enter the United States through the Laredo Port of Entry.
In exchange for the plea, federal prosecutors said felony counts of illegally transporting the woman into the U.S. and lying to investigators will be dismissed.
Walker is slated to be sentenced August 9 and could face up to 10 years in prison.
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