Valley Central – by Dave Hendricks
When Border Patrol agents checked a bus passenger’s papers at the Falfurrias checkpoint last week, they did a double-take.
The bus passenger handed them a driver’s license identifying himself as David, a 34-year-old man from Edinburg, according to federal court records.
Along with the driver’s license, the man had a birth certificate and a Social Security card identifying him as David.
Border Patrol agents working the checkpoint at 1 a.m. Thursday, though, knew David — and he wasn’t the guy on the bus.
They would have recognized him: David is a fellow Border Patrol agent assigned to the Falfurrias area, according to federal court records.
Border Patrol agents pulled the passenger off the Houston-bound bus and took him to the Falfurrias Station for questioning. The man admitted he was actually 24-year-old Orlando Castaneda-Diaz, a Mexican citizen who claimed to have illegally crossed the border on April 12, according to the federal criminal complaint against him.
Castaneda-Diaz said he bought the documents from a man in Matamoros for $2,000, according to the criminal complaint, and had never met the real David.
The real David, who KGBT-TV reached through National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 — the union that represents agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector — asked to be identified by his middle name to protect his privacy.
Border Patrol agents arrested Castaneda-Diaz and contacted the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Bureau.
Magistrate Judge Jason B. Libby charged Castaneda-Diaz with making a false claim to United States citizenship and scheduled a detention hearing for Wednesday.
Neither Castaneda-Diaz’s attorney nor a local Border Patrol spokesman immediately responded to requests for comment Sunday afternoon and Monday morning.
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=1193597#.VTVjUiFViko
He probably got the idiot’s watch, too.