David Johnson

David J. Johnson, who headed the FBI’s Salt Lake City division, is shifting gears a bit to the west and taking over the San Francisco office.

Johnson began his career with the FBI in 1991, and was first posted a Violent Crime Squad in the San Jose Resident Agency.

In 1994, he was assigned to the High Technology Squad, and worked on a case that became the first to be prosecuted under the economic espionage classification.

In 1997, Johnson was assigned to a Mexican Drug Trafficking Organization Squad. Two years later, he became a supervisory special agent of the Asian Organized Crime Squad in the San Jose Resident Agency. He led two multi-agency task forces that targeted human trafficking and police corruption and racketeering cases, the FBI said.

As the chief of the Crimes against Children Unit, he developed the Innocence Lost National Initiative, which identifies and rescues minors involved in prostitution and investigates the pimps involved in these crimes.

He was promoted to the assistant special agent in charge of the San Francisco Division, and in 2008 he led the task force created by the attorney general to conduct a criminal investigation into the destruction of interrogation videotapes by the CIA.

In 2009, he became chief of the Violent Crimes Section in the Criminal Investigative Division, responsible for managing programs that involve federal violations such as bank robberies, kidnappings, extortions, crimes against children, Indian country matters, fugitives, major theft, transportation crimes, and special jurisdiction matters.

In 2011, he was reassigned to be the chief of the newly created Latin America/Southwest Border Threat Section.

Johnson has a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Loren Cannon has replaced Johnson as the acting head of the Utah FBI.

 Steve Neavling

Private landowners may play a key role in the battle to crack down on human and drug smugglers along the Mexican border, Reuters reports.

Texas officials announced an initiative Thursday to allow landowners to equip their property with hundreds of small, motion-activated cameras.

Many landowners already have an incentive.

“Our farmers and ranchers are being shot at, they are being intimidated, they are being chased off their own property on an all-too-frequent basis,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples.

The cameras are part of a test program to seize drugs from the border, Reuters reported.

Steve Neavling

 A woman trying to reach the U.S. by swimming across a canal bordering Arizona and Mexico was rescued by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Yuma Sun reports.

The woman and two others who said they were Mexican nationals were trying to swim across the Sanchez Canal late Friday.

But as the water level rose, the woman couldn’t stay afloat, prompting the agent to throw a rope to rescue her, the Sun reported. When that didn’t work, an unidentified agent jumped into the water and pulled her to safety.

“Three individuals attempting to swim the Sanchez Canal … are alive today thanks to the quick action of a Yuma Sector Border Patrol agent,” a Border Patrol press release stated.

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 Persistent budget cuts haven’t stopped the flow of money spent  on technology and manpower to try and stop the flow of drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, NPR reports.

Over the past 25 years, the government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars building fences and detention centers and pursuing suspects with Blackhawk helicopters, according to NPR.

The industrial complex that has emerged on the border also is spreading farther into the U.S.

“It is safe to say that there has been more money, manpower, infrastructure, technology, invested in the border-protection mission in the last three years than ever before,” says Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

It was the end of the line Friday for two former U.S. Border Patrol agents who fled to Mexico while under investigation for smuggling hundreds of illegal immigrants.

The Los Angeles Times reports that two, who are brothers, were convicted in federal court in San Diego of multiple counts of conspiracy, bribery and human smuggling. The brothers names are Raul Villarreal, 42, and Fidel Villarreal, 44.

In 2006, the two fled to Mexico after catching wind that they were under investigation. They were eventually captured.

By Danny Fenster

Federal budget cuts have manifested themselves in a multitude of ways already. Now, dramatically, the Obama administration plans next year to cut the number of National Guard troops patrolling the US-Mexico border by at least half, reports the Washington Times.

Though the White House is not announcing the plans yet, Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter learned of the plan, says half is the minimum number the patrol will have to be cut by, which will mean reshuffling troops already along the border. In Duncan’s state of California, the new plans will mean slashing patrol levels from 264 to just 14.

To read more click here.

By Allan Lengel

A crackdown on drug smugglers has resulted in a dramatic jump in the use of sophisticated tunnels under the Mexico-U.S. border, Reuters reports.

Reuters reports that authorities discovered more than 100 tunnels during President Felipe Calderon’s five years in office. That number is double the ones found over the previous 15 years.

Reuters reports that the cartels have been perfecting the way the tunnels have been built.

The more sophisticated tunnels have hydraulically controlled steel doors, elevato and elecric rail tracks and are built with expensive drilling equipment, Reuters reported.

“It’s evident that those who constructed these tunnels are specialists, not only for the size but also because it requires study of the soil to prevent it from caving in,” General Gilberto Landeros, a Mexican army commander, during the recent discovery of a Tijuana tunnel told Reuters. “The machinery they use for construction is really sophisticated.”

istock photo

It is a fundamentally American right to criticize one’s government, to speak out against wrongful policies–a patriotic act, some would say. But how much dissent is possible if one’s job is to enforce existing laws, whether one agrees with them or not? Legislative change is reserved for political channels, after all–not law enforcement.

A Border Patrol agent found out just how far that dissent can–or, rather, can’t–go, reports the New York Times.

Bryan Gonzalez, a retired police officer and ex-Marine, pulled his vehicle alongside another agent during a lull at their Deming, N.M. border station, and began venting about some of the job’s frustrations, the Times reported.

Gonzalez acknowledged remarking to the other agent that if marijuana were legal drug violence in Mexico would cease, then referenced the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which advocates for an end to the war on drugs.

That and remarks sympathetic to illegal immigrants were passed on along the chain all the way to Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, according to the Times, where the decision was made to let Gonzalez go. Mr. Gonzalez held “personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and espirit de corps,” his termination letter read.

“More and more members of the law enforcement community are speaking out against failed drug policies, and they don’t give up their right to share their insight and engage in this important debate simply because they receive government paychecks,” Daniel Pochoda, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told the Times. Pochoda is handling the case of Joe Miller, an Arizona probation officer who was fired after adding his name to a letter from LEAP.

Miller was one of a handful of federally employed signers of the letters; the rest were mostly retired law enforcement officials who were free from the boss’s reactions. LEAP began with “five disillusioned officers” in 2002, reports the Times, and has grown to include “145 judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and other law enforcement officials, most of them retired,” who can speak free of reprimands, according to the Times.

“I don’t want to work at a place that says I can’t think,” said Mr. Gonzalez. He has since worked as a bouncer, a construction worker and a yard worker, and has considered going back to school and studying law. He filed suit in a Texas federal court in January. Defending the Border Patrol, the Justice Department has sought to have the case thrown out.

“We all know the drug war is a bad joke,” an anonymous veteran Texas police told the Times over the phone. “But we also know that you’ll never get promoted if you’re seen as soft on drugs.”

To read more click here.