On a fateful day in 2002, Castillo found himself chatting with Damian and Damian's friend, Raul Portillo, a sergeant in the Arizona Army National Guard.
Portillo offered Castillo an opportunity to make easy money by joining them in working for Mexican drug smugglers. Castillo initially rebuffed the offer, even though his brother was part of the conspiracy.
Monica Alonzo
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Eric Cantu stands at the U.S.-Mexico border, marked here by a fence of steel poles to keep out cars.
Monica Alonzo
A Border Patrol truck advertising the federal agency during a Customs and Border Protection job fair in Tucson.
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"We've done it before, and it's on the up-and-up," Portillo told Castillo, trying to assuage the agent's fears. Castillo mulled the offer for two weeks and eventually agreed to help out.
Portillo introduced Castillo to drug-trafficking contacts he recently had made, and on April 2, 2002, Castillo flew to California to meet with the contacts' "uncle," presumably a higher-ranking cartel member. The next stop was a yacht, where they discussed how Castillo might get involved in the trade and recruit others.
He would be paid a bonus if he brought in other agents, they told him.
Although Castillo agreed to join the criminal ring, he wasn't sold on the idea. He was reluctant to recruit, saying he wouldn't know how to approach someone with such an offer. He expressed concern about how the drug smugglers would send vehicles through his lane.
Castillo was handed an envelope containing $1,000 — an advance, they told him — which they said he was free to keep even if he chose to back out.
Neither Castillo, his brother, Damian, nor Portillo knew that they were actually dealing with FBI undercover agents posing as Mexican drug smugglers.
Dismissing his moral dilemma, Castillo allowed what he believed were two loads of cocaine to pass through his lane on April 12, 2002, at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales. Four months later, he sold immigration documents to an FBI agent to allow alleged illegal immigrants into the United States.
Castillo did wind up recruiting somebody: Raphael Hernandez, an Arizona Department of Corrections employee who agreed to transport drugs.
As the network of corruption grew, Castillo served as a scout in March 2003 to ensure safe delivery of a drug shipment through Nogales. On the same day, he was asked to drive a load across a border checkpoint.
He repeatedly told an undercover agent that he didn't want to go through with the delivery because dogs at the border checkpoint would discover the drugs. Testing his limits, the agent told Castillo several times that the dogs would be removed and that he had paid another dirty customs officer $5,000 to make sure Castillo made it safely across.
Finally, Castillo — who had accepted about $32,000 in bribes — agreed and made his way through the checkpoint, where he was arrested.
Castillo was convicted in the conspiracy and sentenced to five years in prison in May 2007.
Building a case against Portillo, the 38-year-old National Guard sergeant who lured Castillo into the drug ring, took much longer.
On January 2002, a few months before pulling Castillo into the conspiracy, Portillo had met with the undercover agents, who he believed were drug traffickers, and offered to move the organization's product.
In February 2002, Portillo drove cocaine to Las Vegas from Tucson in his official government vehicle. He wore his Army-issued uniform and carried his military identification to make sure the white powder made it safely to its destination. He did the same in April 2002, only this time driving the powder to Tucson from Nogales. He pocketed $12,000 for the trips — and had gotten an extra $2,000 for recruiting Castillo.
Although an arrest warrant was issued for Portillo in 2006, investigators didn't capture him until last May. He was arraigned and inexplicably released on "personal recognizance," after the suspected drug dealer promised to show up for all his court dates.
That didn't happen, and Portillo is on the lam.
In his absence, a federal grand jury in Tucson handed down a 10-count indictment against him in September on charges of conspiracy, bribery, and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute.
"With more and more security, technology, and other means to protect our country, smugglers and criminals are changing the way they do business," Langwell says. "One way to do that is to have agents on the take."
She says nearly all the agents working the border carry out their assignments with integrity but that the "ones taking bribes to allow smuggling groups [to operate] are especially dangerous, given all the terrorist threats we face in this global community.
"For those who sell out their country for a few thousand dollars, it's especially troubling."
