Ex-INS Inspector Gets 30 Years for Bribery : Border: Chula Vista worker admitted receiving $5,000 each time he allowed about 15 shipments of cocaine to go through his lane at the San Ysidro border crossing.

A former immigration inspector at the San Ysidro border crossing was sentenced Friday to 30 years in federal prison for accepting bribes so drug smugglers could bring tons of cocaine and hundreds of pounds of marijuana into the United States.

The sentencing of John Salazar, a former inspector with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, follows his guilty plea Jan. 9 to charges of conspiracy and official corruption.

Three others involved in the case have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from 13 years to 30 years. The smuggling case is the largest in San Diego County that has resulted in prosecutions.

Also on Friday, U.S. Atty. William Braniff discussed the indictment of another INS inspector, who Wednesday was charged along with seven members of an alleged Mexico-based smuggling ring of conspiring to import nearly 330 pounds of cocaine through the Tecate border crossing.

In the Salazar case, court documents show that the 47-year-old Colombian native who lives in Chula Vista as a naturalized U.S. citizen admitted receiving $5,000 each time he allowed about 15 shipments of cocaine to go through his lane at the San Ysidro border crossing.

Federal officials have conservatively estimated that he allowed more than 5 tons of the drug to be smuggled into the United States during 1990 and 1991.

Officials began to investigate Salazar in June, 1991, after a plot to smuggle cocaine was uncovered by officials in Operation Alliance, a multi-agency task force established to fight drug importation in the Southwest.

The initial investigation led to the seizure of two vans carrying a total of 3,553 pounds of cocaine that was covered with 372 pounds of marijuana.

Several weeks later, Mexican officials seized about 800 pounds of cocaine. People taken into custody identified a Mexican national as being responsible for bribing Salazar to allow drugs to enter the United States.

The leader of the Mexican drug ring and the man responsible for bribing Salazar, Carlos Ceja-Pimental, pleaded guilty earlier this month and will be sentenced along with a co-conspirator in October.

Federal officials said Salazar’s sentence sent a strong message to other public officials considering taking bribes. However, prosecutors said his sentence may be significantly reduced because he cooperated with investigators after his role in the drug ring was uncovered.

Although Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick O’Toole said he will recommend a reduction in Salazar’s sentence because his help is expected to lead to other convictions, he said Friday’s sentencing was handled fairly.

“It was important for the court and for the government to treat Mr. Salazar today the same as it would any other criminal under similar circumstances,” O’Toole said. “He was given the exact same sentence that anybody else would have (received).”

At a press conference Friday, Braniff, the U.S. attorney, also discussed the indictment of another INS inspector, George Reyes.

Reyes, a 42-year-old Dulzura resident who has been suspended after 10 years with the INS, was indicted on charges of conspiracy and attempting to bribe a U.S. Customs inspector who worked with government prosecutors. According to the seven-count indictment, Reyes was involved in a plot to smuggle cocaine through the Tecate border crossing.

Prosecutors said Reyes approached Customs Inspector Mark Wilkerson and offered him a bribe to help smuggle the cocaine into the United States.

On Friday, John C. Kelly Jr., a special agent with the Customs Service, called Wilkerson a “modern-day hero” who has received a promotion after refusing to accept the bribes.

“He chose to take the high road (and) do the right thing,” Kelly said. “In light of being offered thousands of dollars, he did the right thing.”

In addition to Friday’s indictment, Reyes was charged last month with accepting $600 in bribes and conspiring to smuggle undocumented aliens into the United States. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Kelly and other federal officials acknowledge that agents who monitor the borders are facing an increasing amount of stress in an era of reduced federal resources and huge quantities of money that are routinely handled by drug smugglers.

“There are many out there every day facing that line, breathing those fumes, looking at lines and lines of people and cars and being tempted,” Kelly said of the border inspectors. “It is a difficult job under difficult circumstances.”

Two other federal officials in California have been charged with participating in drug-smuggling.

Former INS Inspector Sergio Rafael Gonzalez, 42, was sentenced in March to nearly nine years in prison for accepting bribes from drug smugglers who were actually undercover FBI agents.

Gonzalez accepted $35,000 in bribes to allow vehicles that he thought were carrying large quantities of cocaine to pass through his station at the Calexico border crossing in 1990.

INS Inspector Ricardo Nunez Felix, 34, is in custody awaiting trial on charges of accepting as much as $250,000 in bribes in exchange for allowing more than 50 carloads of cocaine and marijuana to pass through his lane at the Calexico border crossing.