CBP Agent Charged with Smuggling, Trafficking in City Judicial Watch Exposed as Major Cartel Corridor Years Ago

A federal agent in a border region long known as a major corridor for Mexican cartels smuggling narcotics and Islamic terrorists into the United States has been arrested and charged with alien smuggling and drug trafficking. The case involves a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in El Paso, Texas, where Judicial Watch years ago uncovered an unprecedented partnership between Mexican drug cartels and jihadists as part of a decade-long investigation into crime, terrorism and corruption in the southern border. Back in 2017 Judicial Watch also produced an investigative documentary detailing an elaborate narco-terrorist cell operating out of El Paso, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirms is a primary hub for Mexican opioids and methamphetamine enroute to every corner of the U.S.

Corruption within the law enforcement ranks has also been a problem in the region at both local and federal levels, Judicial Watch investigations show, with a number of federal agents caught taking bribes over the years. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch reported on the criminal indictment of Jesus Campa, the chief deputy of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (EPCSO), a Texas agency responsible for patrolling more than 1,000 square miles with a population of about 870,000. After nearly two decades with the agency, he left abruptly amid allegations of embezzling $5.6 million in Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) funds. His boss, Sheriff Richard Wiles, was embroiled in several scandals. Besides looking the other way as one of his trusted deputy chiefs embezzled millions of dollars, Wiles attended a fundraising event at the home of a convicted felon with connections to the illegal drug trade while serving his third term as sheriff.

The recent CBP case involves an agent, Manuel Perez, who federal authorities say has helped smuggle illegal immigrants and cocaine for six years on the El Paso border. In multiple instances the disgraced 32-year-old agent admitted vehicles driven by illegal immigrants at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso as part of human smuggling operations, according to a statement issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Additionally, Perez conspired to possess cocaine from 2019 to February 2025 as part of an operation to distribute the drug throughout Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and elsewhere in the country. The officer is charged with one count of conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States for financial gain, three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for financial gain, and one count of conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He faces decades to life in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

Perez’s case indicates that little has changed since Judicial Watch first traveled to El Paso over 10 years ago to expose the reality gripping a city long promoted by local officials as one of America’s safest. The truth is that the municipality, which sits along the Rio Grande across famously violent Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a key smuggling route for Mexican drugs, illegal immigrants, and Islamic terrorists. Cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso by using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, Judicial Watch reported a decade ago. We also broke a story in 2015 about an ISIS training cell just a few miles from El Paso in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Law enforcement and intelligence sources on both sides of the border confirmed to Judicial Watch that cartel-backed “coyotes” help smuggle ISIS terrorists through the desert and into the U.S. between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. The areas are targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces and the relative safe havens the terrain provides for unchecked large-scale drug smuggling.

With four years of open borders under the Biden administration and corrupt federal agents like Perez, there is no telling how many terrorists have entered the country to plan attacks. Afterall, in 2016 Judicial Watch uncovered an operation in which Mexican drug traffickers helped Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks and among them was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who at the time lived in Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to information provided to Judicial Watch by government sources.