San Diego University recently published a new study that investigated more than 150 cases that involved officers or border agents who had been previously investigated, arrested, or had been convicted, for various types of corruption cases.

In their investigation they discovered that 71 percent of corruption cases involved human trafficking and drug trafficking, as well as bribes for millions of dollars.

There were many bribery cases, they told the story of one border patrol officer who was alleged to have received $5 million within only 5 years time.

Currently, the border agency has tens of thousands of employees and the current study only focuses on just 160 cases.

The professor who was behind the investigation, Dr. Jancsics, said that he believes the agency is not corrupt and that the vast majority of servants are good. However, on that note researchers did discover that agents who had spent less time employed with the agency were more likely to commit a crime and for that reason they suggest the agency needs more resources to use to focus on training etc, for those first years for agents.

Corruption cases can be found with officers coming from all over the country, the stricter the rules get the more appealing the bribes will likely follow.

The study found that for those officers who were rookies, they were more likely to engage in corruption that involved trafficking drugs, whereas veterans were more likely to help facilitate extreme freedom and take part in sneaking people into the country.

"Organized crime groups will actively target federal border law enforcement to assist with their illicit transport, since bribing agents is less risky than being caught by random inspections." - Dr. Jancsics

In their study, 3 states accounted for 70 percent of the cases that had been investigated, they were Texas, California, and Arizona.

Texas had the highest number of cases involving corruption that were studied. Researchers suggest that this is only the "tip of the iceberg" because they aren't aware of the full extent of the corruption and are only aware of what has been reported in cases so far.

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