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Smugglers trying to beat tighter border security measures are bribing Homeland Security employees.

Four agents in far west Texas, convicted last year of allowing vehicles filled with illegal immigrants and drugs through the Sierra Blanca checkpoint in exchange for bribes, are among dozens of immigration, customs and Border Patrol agents facing corruption charges—and the number of cases is expected to grow.

“We’re disappointed when any agent violates the trust that was given upon them,” Chief Patrol Agent Robert Fuentes said.

And while corruption has existed as long as there has been a border, authorities have noticed a spike in cases since the Sept. 11 attacks.

“As it becomes more difficult to cross the border, it becomes more important for the drug type organizations and alien smuggling organizations to try to recruit officers,” FBI Supervisory Agent Jay Abbott said.

Traffickers tempt them with hefty bribes that can easily top an average agent’s salary, about $50,000 a year.

Criminal organizations also know how to exploit close-knit communities where it’s not unusual for agents and smugglers to grow up together, or for extended families to include relatives on both sides of the border—and the law.

The Sierra Blanca checkpoint case involved two brothers—one of whom worked for the Border Patrol, the other for smugglers.

Critics, including members of the Border Patrol agents union, are calling for more thorough background checks as the agency beefs up its forces.

Traffickers are trying to take advantage of the unprecedented effort to add 6,000 new agents in the next two years.

Some of the more sophisticated drug organizations are actually placing people into the Border Patrol or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in order to assist their efforts.

And concerns aren’t limited solely to new recruits. This spring a supervisor at an immigration detention center in El Paso was arrested for taking a $20,000 bribe to release an agent from Mexico caught smuggling people across the border.