U.S. Customs Worker Held as ‘Major Conduit’ for Marijuana

A part-time U.S. Customs inspector at the San Ysidro border crossing acted as a “major conduit” for the import of thousands of pounds of marijuana into the United States, federal investigators charged Tuesday.

The charges of official corruption and drug smuggling against Jose Angel Barron, 40, of San Ysidro were described as part of a nationwide crackdown, called Operation Clean Sweep, aimed at rooting out graft among U.S. Customs Service agents and officers, Customs officials said.

Customs internal affairs investigators arrested Barron Monday night as he worked in the primary inspection lanes at the border crossing.

Under Surveillance

The agents, who had conducted on-the-job surveillance of Barron on at least nine other occasions since late February, watched him wave two pickup trucks with camper shells and blacked-out windows across the border into the United States without inspecting them or talking to the drivers, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

Agents who followed the trucks to two houses in Chula Vista found that each contained more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana, the affidavit says. Agents, assisted by the Chula Vista Police Department, arrested six men and a woman, most of them Mexican citizens, on drug smuggling charges.

A search late Monday found that Barron had $70,000 in cash in his home and “hundreds of thousands of dollars” more at his parents’ home in San Ysidro, Assistant U.S. Atty. Phillip L. B. Halpern said.

Barron earns about $28,000 annually as an area manager for the San Diego Parks and Recreation Dept. and about $13,000 annually in his part-time Customs job, officials said. He had worked since 1981 as one of a small number of temporary employees used by Customs to help staff border crossings during peak hours and seasons.

According to the affidavit, investigators secretly photographed the alleged head of the drug ring--Angel Garcia Gutierrez, 32, the owner of a Tijuana karate studio--entering Barron’s house seven times in the last three months to deliver money or instructions about the smuggling operation. Gutierrez was among those arrested on drug smuggling charges.

‘Major Organization’

Halpern said that Barron had served as a “major conduit for drugs entering the U.S.” and that the drug smuggling network he allegedly worked with was “a major, major organization.” Investigators were uncertain, however, how much marijuana the alleged smuggling ring had imported or how long it had operated.

Barron was one of a small number of targets of Operation Clean Sweep, which has been under way for about a year, according to Joseph Cunha, acting regional director of Customs’ office of internal affairs in San Diego.

Cunha declined to describe the operation in detail but said its goal is “to ferret out the small amount of corruption in the Customs Service.”