Bonner named to SW Border task force

Bonner named to SW Border task force

Bonner

   Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner has been tapped by the Department of Homeland Security to participate on a task force that will review and provide advice on the department's efforts to crack down on drug cartels and violence on the Southwest border.
   Bonner is one of 21 individuals named by Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano to the task force, which essentially is operating as a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council that meets regularly to provide feedback to DHS officials.
   Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance, and Francis 'Pancho' Kinney, a BTA member and former DHS deputy director of international affairs, were also named to the task force, which is chaired by former FBI and CIA director William Webster.
   The DHS earlier this year shifted resources to the U.S.-Mexican border and began conducting higher levels of outbound inspections of trucks, rail cars, passenger vehicles and pedestrians in an effort to stop smuggling of cash and guns to the drug cartels.
   Bonner is a senior principal at the Sentinel HS Group, a homeland security consulting firm and a partner in the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm.