Explore "Border Guard" by Don Whitehead on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Customs now has 240 special agents who police the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico coastlines and the borders between Mexico and Canada. Their work is supported by 487 Customs enforcement officers (port patrolmen) and 2,551 Customs inspectors and supervisors.
Pressures for a special investigative force to combat smuggling and fraud developed after the Civil War, when normal trade was resumed between the United States and other nations of the world. Violations of the Tariff Act and a loose morality in administrative offices became so flagrant in those postwar years that in May, 1870, Congress passed a law providing: "The Secretary of the Treasury may appoint special agents, not exceeding 53 in number, for the purpose of making examinations of the books, papers and accounts of Collectors and other officers of the Customs, and to be employed generally under the direction of the Secretary, in the prevention and detection of frauds on the Customs revenue."