Former Border Patrol Agent Sentenced to Prison For 9.5 Years For Giving Drug Traffickers Keys to Border Fences
by Cristina Laila
TheGatewayPundit.com
March 11, 2019
Former Border Patrol agent, Robert Hall, 45, of La Feria, Texas was sentenced to 114 months in prison plus 3 years of supervised release for accepting bribes to facilitate the trafficking of illegal drugs.
Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Patrick for the Southern District of Texas, Special Agent in Charge Perrye Turner of the FBI’s Houston Field Office and Special Agent in Charge Juan Benavides of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) made the announcement.
According to the plea documents, between 2004 and 2014, while a border patrol agent, Mr. Hall working with others, including his associate Daniel Hernandez, 46, of Roseville, California, facilitated the trafficking of illegal drugs, including marijuana into the US from Mexico.
Mr. Hall was working on behalf of a drug trafficking organization (DTO) in exchange for cash payments.
According to the Justice Department, Mr. Hall “provided an individual in the DTO with Customs Border Protection (CBP) sensor locations, the locations of unpatrolled roads at or near the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of BPAs working in a certain area, keys to unlock CBP locks located on gates to ranch fences along the border and CBP radios.”
In total, Hall accepted over $50,000 in cash from the DTO in exchange for using his position as a BPA to enable the DTO’s drug shipments to cross the border into Texas without law enforcement detection, the DOJ said in a press release.
Robert Hall pleaded guilty to one count of bribery.
Hall’s associate, Daniel Hernandez, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to bribe a public official.
