Lawsuit puts Customs Service on Trial

The San Diego Union - Tribune  San Diego, Calif. , April 29, 1998
Valerie Alvord

The allegations, which date to 1992, were laid out for a jury yesterday in San Diego's federal court, where customs agent Ricardo Sandoval is seeking more than $1 million in back pay, attorney's fees and other damages. Sandoval has accused customs officials in a lawsuit of trying to intimidate him into covering up an embarrassment. "They didn't want him to air the agency's dirty laundry," Sandoval's attorney, David Spivak, told the jury in his opening statement. Sandoval's lawsuit is another slap against the Customs Service in San Diego, which has come under attack for years by some of its own agents, who contend corruption and mismanagement are rampant in the agency. While individual agents and inspectors have been prosecuted for various crimes, no conspiracy within the agency's hierarchy has ever been proved. Customs is the agency responsible for stopping contraband, including drugs, from coming into the country. Its inspectors are considered the first line of defense in the drug war. The agency also collects trade fees and administers trade agreements with other countries. They say at least two top officials, including Homer Williams, the national head of the service's internal affairs division, helped promote the problems by encouraging agents such as Sandoval to look the other way. Williams, an assistant customs commissioner in Washington, is under investigation by a San Diego federal grand jury. The panel is looking into whether Williams told a local agent with whom he socialized that she was suspected of corruption. Full Text: Copyright SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY Apr 29, 1998 An agent for the U. S. Customs Service says he lost a promised promotion and suffered other retaliation after reporting what he believed was a neo-Nazi group inside the agency in San Diego. The allegations, which date to 1992, were laid out for a jury yesterday in San Diego's federal court, where customs agent Ricardo Sandoval is seeking more than $1 million in back pay, attorney's fees and other damages. Sandoval has accused customs officials in a lawsuit of trying to intimidate him into covering up an embarrassment. "They didn't want him to air the agency's dirty laundry," Sandoval's attorney, David Spivak, told the jury in his opening statement. Customs officials in Washington deny that such a racially motivated group existed or that Sandoval suffered any kind of intimidation. "I have not heard of any such group, and I can say with absolute certainty that we are not sympathetic to anyone involved in this kind of cell," customs spokesman Bill Anthony said yesterday. Sandoval's lawsuit is another slap against the Customs Service in San Diego, which has come under attack for years by some of its own agents, who contend corruption and mismanagement are rampant in the agency. While individual agents and inspectors have been prosecuted for various crimes, no conspiracy within the agency's hierarchy has ever been proved. Customs is the agency responsible for stopping contraband, including drugs, from coming into the country. Its inspectors are considered the first line of defense in the drug war. The agency also collects trade fees and administers trade agreements with other countries. Sandoval's lawyers say they will call more than a dozen current and former customs employees to testify that corruption, discrimination and retaliation ran unchecked inside the agency in 1992 and have continued to plague it. They say at least two top officials, including Homer Williams, the national head of the service's internal affairs division, helped promote the problems by encouraging agents such as Sandoval to look the other way. Williams, an assistant customs commissioner in Washington, is under investigation by a San Diego federal grand jury. The panel is looking into whether Williams told a local agent with whom he socialized that she was suspected of corruption. Sandoval's attorneys, who took sworn statements from Williams as part of the current lawsuit, say Williams might have tipped off other agents who were suspected of letting drug cartels move their loads through the border checkpoint in Calexico. They plan to call Williams as a witness today. In an unusual twist yesterday, Ray Lee, the government lawyer defending the Customs Service, did not mention Sandoval's allegations of a racist faction within the agency, which are at the heart of the agent's lawsuit. Lee told the jury that Sandoval, 42, has always been a good agent and denied that he experienced retaliation. He said Sandoval's superiors tried to arrange a promotion for him, but could not because of cutbacks after President Clinton took office in January 1993. The lawyer said later that his lack of response to the allegations about a neo-Nazi group should not be taken to mean he believes a racist group of agents operated in customs. Sandoval, who ran the service's internal affairs division in Calexico in 1992, says he was considered a top-notch agent in the Imperial Valley office when he was asked to go to San Diego to look into a claim by a black inspector that customs employees threw rocks at him. Despite early skepticism, Sandoval says, he came to believe a neo-Nazi group was behind the incident. He said he reported this to his superiors and, to his amazement, they told him to ignore it. "They told him they'd send out a memo saying inspectors shouldn't throw rocks at black employees," his attorney, Spivak, told the jury. Sandoval ignored the warnings and reported the results of his investigation to the U. S. Attorney's Office, his lawyers say. According to the lawsuit, federal prosecutors in San Diego referred the case to the Justice Department's hate crimes unit in Washington. The lawsuit does not mention the outcome of that referral, and attorneys on both sides of the lawsuit declined to talk about it yesterday. Sandoval says he had been promised a promotion just weeks before he investigated the rock-throwing incident, but when the promotion did not come through, he was told he must have misunderstood. On Monday, the day before his trial began, Sandoval finally got that promotion, his lawyers say. They say he is now scheduled to take over as resident agent in charge of the office of investigations in Calexico. That means he will head the office.