Jon Christian Ryter -- Border Patrol agents railroaded for open borders, Part 1

BORDER PAROL AGENTS RAIROADED FOR OPEN BORDERS
PART 1 of 2

By Jon Christian Ryter

October 25, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

On Feb. 17, 2005 drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila loaded up his van with 743 lbs of marijuana and headed for the US border where he expected to deliver his illegal cargo to waiting drug dealers in the United States. Within 48 hours, Aldrete-Davila believed his marijuana would be in the distribution pipeline and he would be back in Mexico awaiting his next drug deal. Only, that night would not be a typical run for the drug smuggler. That night, he would cross paths with a couple of US Border Patrol agent�and the encounter would change their lives forever. It would also have cause to make the American people wonder on which side of the illegal invasion of America their government stood because what happened should not transpire between a criminal who avoided arrest while smuggling a million dollar's worth of marijuana into the country and the US Department of Justice. It smells like rotten mackerel.

Border Patrol agent Jose Alonso Compean, age 28, was driving on the levee road near the Rio Grande in Fabens, Texas, some 40 miles southeast of El Paso when he spotted a suspicious van moving at high speed ahead of him, heading north. Compean called for backup. Responding to his call for help was 37-year old Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos who had arrested over 100 drug smugglers during his career with the Border Patrol. Ramos is an 8-year veteran of the US Navy, and was a former "Border Patrol Agent-of-the-year" nominee. A third, unidentified, Border Patrol agent was already chasing the van. He would avoid prosecution by agreeing to testify against Ramos and Compean. Driving the van was Aldrete-Davila.

When Aldrete-Davila reached the outskirts of Fabens, he realized he would not be able to outrun the law enforcement officers and decided to try to get his contraband back across the Mexican border in order to avoid arrest and the seizure of his million dollar cargo. Compean, who was coming upon the chase from a different direction, realized Aldrete-Davila was going to try to get back across the border. He positioned himself between the fleeing drug runner and the two agents who were in hot pursuit. Had Compean been a little bit bigger man, or had the Mexican smuggler been less powerful physically, the chase would have ended different. It would have been just another night on the border and the three Border Patrol agents would have been heralded as heroes who kept a million dollars of marijuana off of America's streets�and out of our schools.

Realizing he could not save both the contraband and himself, Aldrete-Davila abandoned his van on the levee and began running to the river�into the waiting Compean. As he neared the levee, Ramos could hear Compean shouting at the fleeing illegal to stop as he crossed one of the canals. Shots rang out changing, in the mind of Ramos, the danger level of the chase. Ramos would later testify that "...[a]t some point during the time where I'm crossing the canal, I hear shots being fired. Later, I see Compean on the ground, but I keep running after the smuggler." Through the thick dust Ramos saw Aldrete-Davila, who was turning to face him. Ramos testified that he saw what appeared to be a nickle-plated gun in his hand. Believing his life was in danger, he fired. "I shot," Ramos continued. "But I didn't think he was hit because he kept running into the brush and disappeared. Later we all watched as he jumped into a van [on the other side of the border] waiting for him. He seemed fine. It didn't look like he had been hit at all." By that time seven other Border Patrol agents�including two supervisors�were on the scene. Compean, who fired at the fleeing illegal after he was physically attacked by the man, picked up his shell casing. Ramos did not.

Among the charges leveled on the two agents was that they concealed the fact that they had discharged their weapons at a fleeing suspect and that they contaminated the "crime scene" when Compean picked up his shell casings. According to the ICE Border Protection Table of Offenses and Penalties, failure to report that a weapon was discharged in the line of duty is punishable by suspension for 5 days. Assistant US Attorney Debra Kanof, who would prosecute Ramos and Compean, argued that the agents attempted to conceal the fact that they had discharged their weapons�even though the two supervisors who arrived at the scene knew that shots had been fired. But, because neither agent could remember specifically telling the supervisors something they knew, nor filed the paperwork confirming supervisors had been notified that they had fired shots, the government charged them with conspiracy to conceal evidence.

Even with that, the case didn't start to get weird for two weeks. The government's version of what happened is, bluntly speaking, a fabrication. It's a lie because the chain of events we are being asked by the US Attorney to believe are not logical. If they aren't logical, they aren't true. Pre-Law 101. What the government suggests happened next simply doesn't pass the smell test. And, because it doesn't pass the smell test, its probably not true�particularly when you examine the cast of characters�and their closeness to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, President George W. Bush�who played a role in the politicized railroading of two Border Patrol agents�and the open border agenda of the President. The question is�why?

How, and why, did the Bush Administration�at the highest levels�get involved in a what appears to be a bloodless, five minute fray between the Border Patrol in Fabens, Texas, and a narco-trafficker who left a million dollars worth of marijuana on the levee in Fabens as he scrambled back to Mexico? What does a cartel druglord do to a runner who loses his merchandise? Particularly a druglord with the power to put a bounty on the heads of the law enforcement officers who seized his drugs? Or a drug lord with friends high enough in the Vicente Fox government to apply pressure on the Bush Administration? I don't think either Compean or Ramos hit Aldrete-Davila when they fired at him. Nor should the testimony from the eye witnesses who saw the smuggler jump into a van on the other side of the border although they were all given immunity and compelled to testify against Compean and Ramos unless they were expertly coached on how to make "facts" out of vague suspicions. It is far more likely that the drug lord who employed Aldrete-Davila to deliver the cargo of marijuana to buyers on the US side of the border, deliberately shot Aldrete-Davila in the buttock as a warning to other drug runners to protect their contraband with their lives.

Instead, what happened two weeks after the incident was the unexpected involvement of Bush-loyalist US Attorney Johnny Sutton who is headquartered in San Antonio. Sutton is the US Attorney for the Western District of Texas which includes El Paso. Generally, the mundane cases that arise in El Paso are handled by Chief Assistant US Attorney Margaret Leachman. (The shooting at/of an illegal alien smuggling marijuana into the United States would be one of those mundane cases that should have fallen under the purview of Leachman. and not Sutton-loyalist Assistant US Attorney Juanita Fielden). Sutton is plugged into the power structure of the Bush Administration, and has very close ties to both Bush-43 and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He is one of Bush-43's "can-do" guys. Sutton, a former assistant District Attorney in Harris County, Texas, hitched his wagon to Gov. George W. Bush's star in 1995. When Bush won the presidency, Sutton served as policy coordinator for the Bush-Cheney transition team. He went to Washington, DC as an Associate Deputy US Attorney General and, in Nov., 2001, Bush appointed him US Attorney for the Western District of Texas with 118 lawyers under him. It's rumored inside the beltway that Bush is will appoint Sutton to the federal bench before he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009.

The official version of the story from the government that led to the arrest and prosecution of Compean and Ramos is that the mother-in-law of US Border Patrol agent Rene Sanchez, Gregoria Toquinto (in Wilcox, Arizona), received a telephone call from Aldrete-Davila's mother, Marcadia Aldrete-Davila (in Mexico), to complain to Toquinto that Border Patrol agents shot her son in the urethra. The story smells like month-old mackerel.

Why would a Mexican drug runner's mother call the mother-in-law of a US Border Patrol agent and tell her that her son was shot by the Border Patrol after dumping a million dollars worth of marijuana? And, how would she know her? And, finally, why would she finger her own son? Logic suggests if such a conversation actually occurred, the US attorney should have been more curious how the drug runner's mother knew the mother-in-law of a Border Patrol agent, and whether or not she or her son-in-law had any personal "ties" to the drug runner. Clearly, if Aldrete's mother in Mexico has ties with Sanchez's mother-in-law in the United States, you would think both the Border Patrol and the DEA would have wanted to tap both phones to see who Aldrete-Davila and Sanchez were talking to�both in the United States and Mexico.

Without answers to any of those questions, its unreasonable to assume that a competent US Attorney would proceed�or that the US Attorney General or the head of the Department of Homeland Security would send an investigator from the Inspector General's office, Christopher Sanchez (no relation to the Border Patrol agent), to Mexico to interview Aldrete-Davila�and offer him immunity to testify against the two agents who theoretically shot him. In addition, based on the "evidence" that two dedicated Border Patrol agents were somehow more of a threat to the security of the United States than a drug runner who was almost caught with a million dollars worth of marijuana, the US government agreed to repair the smuggler's urethra. which was damaged when he was shot�by whomever shot him. When this one becomes a movie, everyone will recognize it as pure fiction.

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When Compean and Ramos were arrested, logic suggests their supervisors would have called them in to the office where they would have peacefully surrendered to the FBI or US Marshals. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security staged a simultaneous SWAT assault on their respective homes, deliberately traumatizing their families. The SWAT teams from Homeland Security were belligerent and hostile�the type of arrest you might see when the criminal was an illegal alien from Mexico with a million dollars worth of marijuana hidden in his house. There is no doubt that the use of a SWAT team to arrest the two former officers was not out of fear for the safety of the arresting officers, but to instill fear�not only in the families of those who were being arrested, but other Border Patrol agents who will now think twice before doing their jobs on the border. For part two click below.

Click here for part -----> 2