Arrest shows challenge of keeping rogues off Border Patrol

Associated Press

HOUSTON

The arrest of a Border Patrol supervisor on allegations that he killed four women calls new attention to the agency’s problems keeping rogue officers off its force as it faces intense pressure to hire thousands more agents.

Juan David Ortiz, who worked in the agency’s Laredo sector, is accused of targeting women believed to be prostitutes in what prosecutors say is the work of a serial killer.

The Border Patrol and prosecutors portrayed Ortiz as an outlier who is not representative of the thousands of employees working for the agency around the country.

“I would hate for this to tarnish the great work that those men and women do,” Border Patrol chief Carla Provost said at a news conference alongside prosecutors and other law-enforcement officials.

But Ortiz’s arrest and allegations of violence involving other Border Patrol agents have thrown a spotlight on how the agency vets prospective hires at a time when President Donald Trump wants to bring on 5,000 more agents as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration. Congress has not funded the request.

The Border Patrol has struggled for many years to hire enough agents. Many jobs on the force require living in remote desert towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. Agents must pass a detailed background investigation, and the polygraph exam that’s been required of all applicants since 2012 is a major barrier, with just a 28 percent pass rate between 2013 and 2016.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, said Monday that he was weighing whether the agency should consider requiring a psychological examination for all new officers. He said he also spoke to agency leaders Sunday about adding more internal affairs officers. Cuellar is a member of the House subcommittee that reviews the budget for the Customs and Border Protection division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Ortiz is a 35-year-old Navy veteran who joined the Border Patrol in 2009, around the time of the last major hiring surge at the agency.

The agency has grown dramatically over the last 20 years, from about 8,000 agents in 1998 to about 20,000 today. There are roughly 1,700 agents in the Laredo sector, which is west of the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for unauthorized border crossings.

As the force grew, so did arrests on charges of misconduct. The Government Accountability Office found that 336 employees of CBP were arrested in fiscal year 2012, compared with 190 arrests in 2005.