CBP officers took money from Mexican cartels, prosecutors say

The border crossing at Tecate, Mexico, as seen when it was temporarily closed on Sept. 1, 2022.

Staff Writer

Published Sept. 5, 2024 Updated Sept. 9, 2024 3:24 PM PT

It seemed like a harmless work assignment trade.

Jesse Garcia, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, was monitoring the pedestrian lane at the border crossing in Tecate on Aug. 22, 2023, when he asked a fellow officer to switch assignments so that Garcia would work the primary vehicle lane.

While working the vehicle lane, Garcia admitted Amanda Mancera, who was driving a Toyota Camry. At a checkpoint in the U.S. later that day, border agents uncovered nearly four kilograms of fentanyl and 216 kilograms of cocaine in Mancera’s vehicle.

Federal prosecutors said it was no coincidence that Mancera crossed the border while Garcia was working the lane. Between 2021 and this year, Garcia and another Customs and Border Protection officer who worked at the Otay Mesa crossing, Diego Bonillo, helped a Mexican drug trafficking organization move huge amounts of drugs across the border. In exchange, the officers were paid tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle they admitted into the country.

For the record:

3:22 p.m. Sept. 9, 2024An earlier version of this story said that Garcia and Bonillo worked for the Border Patrol. They were Customs and Border Protection officers but were not part of the Border Patrol.

Bonillo and Garcia were charged in May with an 11-count indictment, accusing the pair with importation of methamphetamines, fentanyl and cocaine. They face more than a decade in prison.

The arrests were first reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune after a search warrant was unsealed in the case Tuesday. Garcia and Bonillo have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The officers were arrested in May after an investigation by the FBI’s Border Corruption Task Force. The cartel that allegedly paid the officers was not named in legal documents but prosecutors said the two men “profited handsomely” off the tens of thousands of dollars they were paid for their help.

Garcia was spending far above the means of a Customs and Border Protection officer, buying $2,000 handbags and clothing from Louis Vuitton and Burberry, prosecutors allege. He also owned a $65,000 GMC Yukon, a home in San Diego and a racehorse business all while he was building himself a large ranch in Mexico, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of California. Despite all his purchases, Garcia reported an income of about $5,000 per month.

Bonillo, whose annual salary as a border agent was about $65,000, spent more than $13,000 in travel expenses between November and March. Bonillo was arrested in May in Las Vegas where he was staying at the Aria Resort and had $2,000 tickets to a Canelo Álvarez boxing match.

The case closely resembled that of Leonard Darnell George, who was convicted in June of working for two separate drug trafficking organizations and allowing them to move cars full of drugs through his lane at the border in 2021 and 2022. George charged around $17,000 per vehicle, according to investigators.

Prosecutors say Bonillo and Garcia followed a similar playbook.

Garcia began allowing in drugs in 2021, according to prosecutors.

On April 18, 2021, Vanessa Valdovinos tried to enter the U.S. through the small Tecate border crossing. Two lanes were open to cross and Valdovinos got in Garcia’s lane despite the other lane being empty. Valdovinos was instructed to use the empty lane and hesitated before “finally relenting,” prosecutors said. When her car was searched, officers found dozens of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine.

Of the seven times Valdovinos passed through the Tecate border before her arrest, four were through Garcia’s lane, prosecutors said.

Video on her phone shows Valdovinos discussing which lane to cross through so she would enter the U.S. through Garcia’s lane, according to federal agents.

In February 2024, Garcia allowed Nayeli Viridriana Servin Vega through the Tecate border even though she had been flagged as “high risk.” He claimed he received the alert late, but an audit of his computer showed he got the alert 55 seconds before he admitted her into the country, prosecutors said. She was later arrested in Chula Vista with kilos of methamphetamine in her car, according to federal authorities.

Records showed that Servin not only went through Garcia’s lane at Tecate, but just months earlier, she made a targeted effort to go through Bonillo’s lane at the border at Otay Mesa as well, prosecutors said. She crossed 32 times at the Otay Mesa crossing and five of those times were through Bonillo’s lane, according to prosecutors. Of the 27 other crossings, she went through 25 separate officers’ lanes.

“Telephone evidence reflects that [Servin] was loaded and in contact with known co-conspirators on dates she crossed through [Bonillo’s] lanes, and not at other times she crossed through,” wrote Assistant U.S. Atty. Shauna Prewitt in court documents.

Since their May arrests, Garcia and Bonillo have both been held without bail, accused of being danger to the community and flight risk, according to a federal magistrate judge.

The duo is due back in court on October 25.