Pubdate: Tue, 25 Jun 2013
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2013 The Associated Press
Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/send-a-letter/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Christopher Sherman, The Associated Press

FUNDING DISPUTE STALLS DRUG CASES

Counties Say They Can't Prosecute If U.S. Doesn't Help Pay for 
Pursuing Offenders

FALFURRIAS - On an October afternoon in 2009, a Dallas man arrived at 
a highway checkpoint about an hour north of the U.S.-Mexico border. 
Inside the gas tank of his pickup truck, agents found 99 pounds of marijuana.

When the Border Patrol called the Drug Enforcement Administration, 
the agency said it was not interested because the bust wasn't big 
enough. So the 32-year-old suspect was passed to the local sheriff 
and pleaded guilty to drug possession in state court. He got a 
suspended sentence and paid a fine.

If the same incident happened again today at the checkpoint south of 
Falfurrias, the man would lose his drugs but probably not be charged at all.

Since the fall of 2010, prosecutors in Brooks County, population 
7,223, have refused to take such cases because of a debt dispute with 
the Justice Department involving a longrunning program that 
reimburses border-state prosecutors for the cost of pursuing some 
drug offenders. Other border counties are frustrated too, because the 
government has proposed eliminating the reimbursements.

Now prosecutors from Texas to California fear the lack of federal 
help could allow many drug suspects to go free.

The reimbursement program was supposed to allow local prosecutors to 
help federal authorities go after suspected criminals without 
squeezing their offices financially.

In fiscal 2009, the Justice Department reimbursed prosecutors in 
Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California for more than 10,000 cases 
through what was then called the Southwest Border Prosecution 
Initiative. But the money stopped coming for Brooks County after an 
audit showed the county was overpaid by nearly $2 million. The 
funding for all other border prosecutors could dry up as well.

Raising questions

Armando Barrera, the former Brooks County district attorney who first 
stopped accepting the cases, once questioned the federal prosecutor 
in charge of the government's Corpus Christi office about the cases 
he used to take.

"I asked him, 'Well, what are you guys doing with the checkpoint 
cases?' and he said, ' Well, we're just turning them loose,' " 
Barrera recalled.

That doesn't sit well with John Hubert, district attorney in 
neighboring Kenedy County, which is home to a similar Border Patrol 
highway checkpoint.

"If the feds cut them loose ... the first thing that is going to 
happen is the drug dealers are going to know 'Hey, guess what? If you 
go through there with less than 250 pounds, you get cut loose,' " Hubert said.

Hubert estimated his office gets about 245 cases a year from the 
checkpoint. The Falfurrias checkpoint generated 158 cases for the 
Brooks County district attorney in 2009, according to records 
obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Poor, rural counties can't afford to subsidize the federal 
government's prosecution efforts by paying for the cases themselves, 
Hubert said. But at the same time, he worries about the message sent 
by letting suspects go.

Will Glaspy, who oversees the DEA's operations in an area of South 
Texas that includes the checkpoint, said the agency continues to 
process those cases even if suspects are not charged. And if any of 
the smugglers are arrested again, they could be prosecuted for the 
cumulative amounts.

Getting money for the reimbursement program has been an annual fight. 
The funding reached $31 million in 2011 but fell to $10 million in 
2012 combined with similar efforts along the northern border. The 
program was left out of the White House's 2013 budget request.

However, the comprehensive immigration reform bill calls for funding 
through 2018.

Financial burden

Brooks County District Judge Richard Terrell handled the Dallas man's 
case and every other checkpoint matter that came through the county 
courthouse during his years on the bench. He said the practice that 
county commissioners once saw as an easy revenue source became a 
financial burden.

"This is a poor county," Terrell said. "They do not have the 
resources, and it's completely unrealistic to think that this county 
can handle those things."

Looming in the background is the $1.9 million overpayment revealed by 
a 2007 federal audit. The Justice Department does not seem willing to 
forgive the debt, and the county has held firm that it needs the money.

Carlos Garcia, who began serving as Brooks County district attorney 
in January, says the reimbursement issue must be solved before he can 
resume taking checkpoint cases, but unlike Terrell, he wants them.

"People need to be held accountable for whatever crimes they commit," 
Garcia said. If the county had an arrangement with the federal 
government to handle some cases, then "at least they're getting 
justice in one of the courts, the state side or the federal side."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom