Drug corruption at Customs stops

Houston Chronicle:

With surveillance cameras secretly rolling, U.S. Customs Inspector Lizandro Martinez greeted the driver of a truck that pulled into his inspection lane at 5:30 a.m.

The driver, a pal from the inspector's days as a police officer more than a decade earlier, told Martinez that the cargo he'd been expecting was right behind his truck. And sure enough, a white Ford pickup appeared. It carried 1,635 pounds of marijuana, packed and ready for the streets of America.

But Martinez didn't stop it, didn't inspect it, didn't call out the dogs. He just waved it through on that lonely morning, FBI agents say. And for that, agents say, drug traffickers paid him $10,000.

Three years later, Martinez, 44, is behind bars, suspected of taking more than $1 million in bribes while waving through more than 50 tons of drugs — more than his law-abiding colleagues seized at eight South Texas ports of entry in an entire year.

As Martinez awaits sentencing, set for April 26, authorities are trying to figure out what happened, how an agent on the front lines of the so-called "drug war" went so terribly bad. And what's emerging, some former law enforcement officials say, is a troubling picture, a striking example of how Customs failed to prevent flagrant corruption on the Texas-Mexico border.

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