August 8, 2006, - 1:49 pm
OUTRAGE: Brave Border Agents Prosecuted, While Muslim Illegal Alien “Students” Roam Free
By
Federal Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean are facing 20 years in prison for going after illegal aliens and smugglers. Our government thinks the diligent job they did to protect themselves and our borders is a problem.
Meanwhile, 11 missing Egyptian “students” who skipped town–and school–are roaming free in America. But our government doesn’t think that is a problem. The FBI says there’s no reason for concern. Way to go, Famous But Incompetent.
What’s wrong with this picture? What’s wrong is that the Bush Administration is not serious about the illegal alien problem and stemming it. What’s wrong is that the Bush Administration is too concerned with politically correct pandering to Islamic foreigners than our safety.
And what’s wrong is that a month before the 5th anniversary of 9/11, we are less safe and more besotten with the co-religionists of those who attacked us than ever.
Here are the important details from a longer, very important piece by The Daily Bulletin (Ontario, California) newspaper’s Sara A. Carter:
EL PASO, Texas – Border Patrol Agent Ignacio Ramos could hear his heart racing. He could feel the dry, hot dust burning against his skin as he chased a drug trafficker trying to flee back into Mexico.
Ramos’ fellow agent, Jose Alonso Compean, was lying on the ground behind him, banged up and bloody from a scuffle with the much-bigger smuggler moments earlier.
Suddenly the smuggler turned toward the pursuing Ramos, gun in hand. Ramos, his own weapon already drawn, shot at him, though the man was able to flee into the brush and escape the agents.
Now, nearly 18 months after that violent encounter, Ramos and Compean are facing 20 years in federal prison for their actions.
Why?
According to the U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the agents, the man they were chasing didn’t actually have a gun, shooting him in the back violated his civil rights, the agents didn’t know for a fact that he was a drug smuggler, and they broke Border Patrol rules about discharging their weapons and preserving a crime scene.
Even more broadly, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof said, Ramos and Compean had no business chasing someone in the first place. . . .
“They don’t throw this many charges at guys they’ve caught with over 2,000 pounds of marijuana,” Ramos said. “There’s murderers and child rapists that are looking at less time than me.
“I am not guilty. I did not do what they’re accusing me of.” . . .
Ramos, an eight-year veteran of the U.S. Naval Reserve and a former nominee for Border Patrol Agent of the Year, now has but one thing on his mind: What will happen to his wife and three young sons if he spends the next two decades in prison?
“It’s (with) a leap of faith and my devotion to God that me and my family will make it through this,” Ramos said as he looked at his wife, Monica, during an exclusive interview with the Daily Bulletin this past month in El Paso.
Two things were clear throughout the interview: Ramos is convinced he was simply doing his job when Aldrete-Davila was shot, and he is perplexed as to why he and his partner are being punished so severely. . . .
About a week ago, feeling little hope, Joe Loya, Monica Ramos’ father, took the family on what will be Ignacio Ramos’ last fishing trip with his sons before he is sentenced.
“What kind of justice is this?” Loya asked. “What kind of nation do we live in when the word of a smuggler means more than the word of a just man?”
Monica Ramos says her hardest day is yet to come — the day the authorities take her husband away.
“We just guard (our children’s) hearts right now,” Monica Ramos said. “I think about the last time he’ll hug them as children, and maybe not get the chance to hug them again until they are grown men.”
The sons are between 6 and 13 years old.
Ignacio Ramos was, if anything, even more emotional.
“Less than a month left with my family,” he said, his voice choking, as though the air had been pulled from his lungs. “My sons,” he whispered. Then silence. . . .
Then he talked about the memories he would never have, “their first dates, high school graduation, sports,” and the tears falling from his eyes were mirrored only by those of his wife, who took his hand into hers.
Read the whole thing. It will–and should–make your blood boil. What our “Justice” Department–President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’s Justice Department–is doing to these men is an outrage.
Thanks to the many readers who sent me this article.
Tags: Alberto Gonzalez, America, attorney, Attorney General, Bush, Bush administration, California, Debbie Schlussel Federal Border Patrol, Debra Kanof, Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, guard, Ignacio Ramos, Joe Loya, Jose Alonso Compean, Mexico, Monica Ramos, Ontario, President, Sara A. Carter, Texas, the 5th anniversary of 9/11, United States
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Thee_Bruno on August 8, 2006 at 2:51 pm