Bordering On Insanity
By INEVSTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, November 16, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Criminal Justice: He's not as famous as Barry Bonds, but the indictment of Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila is a reminder of why there should be an asterisk alongside U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's name as well.
The Mexican Border is a "War Zone"!
Normally the indictment of someone arrested for smuggling drugs into the U.S. would be of little note. But the arrest of Aldrete-Davila at an international port of entry in El Paso on Thursday is a stark reminder of a grave miscarriage of justice involving two U.S. Border Patrol agents who were incarcerated, we believe, for doing their assigned job of protecting the American people against criminals and intruders.
Aldrete-Davila's arrest was announced by U.S. Attorney for West Texas Johnny Sutton. Sutton is the prosecutor who convicted former Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, now serving 12 and 11 years, respectively, for the nonfatal shooting of Aldrete-Davila in 2005. The agents shot Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks as he was transporting more than 700 pounds of marijuana into America through Fabens, Texas, 40 miles east of El Paso.
Compean and Ramos thought they were fulfilling their duties on Feb. 17, 2005, when they shot an allegedly unarmed Aldrete-Davila as he was fleeing into Mexico.
They were convicted of, among other charges, violating Aldrete-Davila's civil rights and trying to conceal their "crime."
Aldrete-Davila showed his gratitude by breaking the immunity agreement he was given by Sutton in exchange for testifying against the two agents and attempting to smuggle an additional 753 pounds of weed into the U.S. the following October. It is that second incident that Sutton successfully concealed from the jury. It is this second felony for which Aldrete-Davila has been arrested and indicted.
As Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., has pointed out, "The prime witness against these two border patrol agents was involved in another major load of drugs, and the prosecution made a conscious decision to keep these facts from the jury."
And as World Net Daily reports, DHS special agent Christopher Sanchez described in a memo how DEA investigators conducted a knock-and-talk in Clint, Texas, on Oct. 23, 2005, with one Cipriano Ernesto Ortiz-Hernandez, who positively identified Aldrete-Davila as the driver who dropped off the 753 pounds of marijuana in a Chevy Astro van at Ortiz-Hernandez's home the day before.
Compean and Ramos were prosecuted by Sutton on the grounds that they shot an unarmed man and conspired to cover it up. But in an April 4, 2005, memo, Agent Sanchez states that Compean believed Aldrete-Davila was armed.
"Compean said that Aldrete-Davila continued to look back over his shoulder toward Compean as Aldrete-Davila ran away from him," Sanchez wrote in the memo.
"Compean said that he began to shoot at Aldrete-Davila because of the shiny object he thought he saw in Aldrete-Davila's left hand. . . . Compean said he thought that the shiny object might be a gun and that Aldrete-Davila was going to shoot him because he kept looking back at him as he was running away."
We believe that, like the Marines accused of crimes at Haditha in Iraq, Ramos and Compean were wrongly accused and imprisoned for doing their job along a border that's becoming increasingly violent. We have reported on repeated armed incursions by drug runners and those paid to protect their operations.
Shawn Moran, a 10-year Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego, says:
"They've got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, GPS systems and can react faster than we are able to. And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles."
In February, ICE agents seized an arms cache that included two improvised explosive devices, materials for making 33 more, 1,280 rounds of ammunition, five grenades and other hardware for making weapons to kill border agents.
Convict Aldrete-Davila. Pardon Ramos and Compean.