Thread: Republicans vow to look into Border Patrol shootings case

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 24661.html

Aug. 17, 2006, 5:35PM

Republicans vow to look into Border Patrol shootings case
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press

EL PASO — Republican congressmen said today they would call for an investigation into why two U.S. Border Patrol agents were prosecuted then convicted this year of shooting a drug-smuggling suspect and trying to cover it up.

They were in El Paso for a House Judiciary Committee field hearing on immigration, one of about a dozen such hearings around the country this month.

Indiana U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, a member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, pledged to take up the case of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. They were convicted in March on several felonies and a civil rights violation.

Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican whose House bill calls for the criminalization of illegal immigrants and other immigration enforcement reforms, called for an investigation into the case.

Several other House members, including Democrat Silvestre Reyes, who led the El Paso Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol before being elected to Congress, also agreed to support a probe.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of the nonprofit Friends of the Border Patrol, asked the committee to launch the investigation, saying the men were wrongly prosecuted and convicted "for simply doing their job."

None of the representatives said whether they would look to overturn the men's convictions.

Amid a strong showing of security around the Chamizal National Monument along the border in El Paso, the committee also heard divergent testimony from law enforcement officials on whether local officers should enforce immigration laws.

El Paso Police Chief Richard Wiles, whose department polices the largest American city on the southern border, called the proposal a mistake.

"We don't have the time, we don't have the resources," Chief Richard Wiles told the committee. "It's not even proper to ask. It causes dissension."

Sensenbrenner, who has become a polarizing figure in the national immigration debate, asked Wiles if he would support a law allowing officers to enforce immigration laws while enforcing state criminal statutes.

"We do not want to become agents of immigration," Wiles answered.

El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego took the opposite stance.

"One step away from the federal line is our jurisdiction," he said. "We, the sheriffs, have to deal with the consequences" of a porous border.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the committee that immigration law is simply too complex to be left to local law enforcement.

The Republican committee members, who sat in the majority Thursday, were greeted by a vocally hostile audience of about 200 onlookers. Sensenbrenner warned the audience several times that they were not to audibly respond to any comments or testimony.

Outside the hearing, which was not open for public comment, about 100 protesters chanted and waived signs telling Sensenbrenner he was not welcome. Some protesters, carrying caricatures of Sensenbrenner as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, decried him as a racist.

After the hearing, Sensenbrenner defended H.R. 4437, his controversial House immigration bill passed last year, and countered accusations he was being racist.

"When you can't argue the merits, you call names," he said. "I authored the voting rights extension bill ... signed by President Bush. Racists don't do that."

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Houston Democrat and the ranking minority member on the Subcommittee on Immigration, called the series of Republican-led hearings a "traveling road show."

Throughout the morning hearing and in a brief press conference afterward, Jackson-Lee urged her Republican counterparts to meet with the Senate to create a unified bill. The Senate passed an immigration reform bill this year that included a path to legalization.

http://elpasotimes.com/breakingnews/ci_4197169

Article Launched: 08/17/2006 01:51:00 PM MDT

House orders hearing in Border Patrol shooting (2:54 p.m.)
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times


House members vowed today to have a congressional hearing into the case of two El Paso Border Patrol agents convicted this year of shooting a drug smuggler in the buttocks.
The hearing, which doesn't have a date yet, would look at the way the Border Patrol conducted its investigation of the 2005 shooting and at the way the Justice Department prosecuted the agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean.

The families of the agents and their supporters claim that the agents should not have been prosecuted for doing their job and applauded the congressional intervention.

“Not just for our family but for all the agents, justice must be served,” said Monica Ramos, Ramos' wife.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of the San Diego-based Friends of the Border Patrol, called the case “the greatest miscarriage of justice I have ever seen” while testifying at the House immigration hearing at the Chamizal National Memorial this morning.

Ramirez also testified that the conviction of the agents on assault and obstruction of justice charges earlier this year was devastating to morale for Border Patrol agents in the field.

Ramos and Compean shot at the drug smuggler during a chase near Fabens on Feb. 17, 2005, as he was running toward Mexico after having abandoned a van filled with marijuana. One bullet hit Aldrete in the buttocks. The agents failed to report the shooting to their superiors. The agents said they thought Aldrete had a gun. Aldrete testified that he did not.

The agents are to be sentenced in September and plan to appeal.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the committee that immigration law is simply too complex to be left to local law enforcement.

How "complex" is it, to determine if someone is here legally? They have a million excuse for why it can't be done.

Sounds to me like the El Paso police chief is just plain scared.