Thread: ICE investigation backfires

ICE investigation backfires
Questions raised; agents disciplined, guidelines changed
By Diana Washington Valdez
Posted: 07/29/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT


EL PASO -- An investigation intended to showcase what a young U.S. federal agency can do along the border has turned into a nightmare for just about everyone involved.

Several federal agents were disciplined, the case has raised questions about a cover-up, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has changed its guidelines and procedures when it deals with confidential informants.

In addition, a law-enforcement advocacy group has asked for an independent investigation with a special prosecutor.

Six years have passed since a dozen bodies were unearthed at a house in Juárez and an ICE informant, wearing a wire, witnessed the first slaying on Aug. 5, 2003, the year ICE was created through the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

The informant, Guillermo Eduardo "Lalo" Ramirez Peyro, said he handed the killers a plastic bag to suffocate the victim -- a lawyer named Fernando Reyes Aguado -- according to Ramirez's affidavit given to Mexican authorities.

Today, the U.S. Justice Department is trying to deport Ramirez. He appealed his deportation order under the Convention Against Torture, and is in custody in Minnesota awaiting the outcome of his case.

Sandalio "Sandy" Gonzalez, the former DEA special agent in charge in El Paso in 2003, said documents prove that high-level U.S. officials knew Ramirez participated in the first slaying, and should have stopped the investigation then.

"Instead of investigating ICE's handling of the case, U.S. government officials chose to cover up what happened," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez alleged in a lawsuit that top officials in the U.S. Attorney General's Office tried to silence him after he complained that the investigation had endangered two DEA agents in Juárez and their families.

Now retired, Gonzalez won his lawsuit against former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales after a Florida court agreed that the government had retaliated against him and awarded him a $85,000 settlement in 2006.

Another federal official, Raul Bencomo, an ICE agent who worked on the 2003 case and was one of Ramirez's handlers, was fired this year and is trying to get his job back. He said he was fired in part for his role in the case.

"I was told that was part of the reason I was terminated," Bencomo said.

Bencomo said other ICE employees associated with the case received lighter punishment than his.

ICE officials in El Paso said they could not comment on personnel matters.

Andy Ramirez, president of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, an advocacy organization for U.S. law enforcement, said an independent special prosecutor should be appointed to review the ICE investigation involving Ramirez.

"Lalo Ramirez should not be sent back to Mexico, where he will probably be killed. He is a material witness in the events that led to the 12 murders and to the DEA agents nearly being killed by the drug cartel," said Andy Ramirez, who is not related to the informant.

In a related case, relatives of two El Paso men filed and lost a lawsuit against Lalo Ramirez and the U.S. government after U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo ruled in 2007 that the informant's U.S. handlers could not have prevented the series of murders that took the lives of the El Pasoans in 2004.

Relatives had argued that Abraham Guzman, who was shot to death in El Paso in 2004, died as a result of the informant's work in an ongoing ICE investigation.

ICE officials denied that Lalo Ramirez was conducting an ICE mission when Guzman was killed.

Gonzalez said it was also worth noting that although most of the crimes took place in Mexico, ICE did not notify Mexican officials immediately after the first killing, nor did they share the location of the house.

ICE officials said they stand by their previous statement regarding the case: "As a result of (the Office of Professional Responsibility) investigation, ICE overhauled its guidelines on the use and handling of confidential informants -- tightening controls, oversight, responsibility and accountability in these processes.

"ICE took disciplinary actions against a number of ICE employees in connection with this situation. At this time, ICE's OPR considers the investigation into these matters closed."


Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com




http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_12934130

Former ICE informant says he helped convict 50
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 07/29/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT


EL PASO -- A former ICE informant who faces deportation was a law enforcement officer in Mexico who quit his job to work in the drug trade.

As Guillermo Eduardo "Lalo" Ramirez Peyro described it in federal documents, life in the Juárez drug cartel consisted of dirty cops smuggling drugs, sudden kidnappings, double-crossings, acts of revenge and gruesome murders.

Ramirez, a former Mexican federal highway police officer, was a DEA informant until he was busted in New Mexico, allegedly while bringing drugs across the border.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency that started in 2003, began to use him as an informant. Ramirez alleges his work led to the successful U.S. prosecutions of 50 people, including Heriberto Santillan Tabares (known in Mexico as Humberto Santillan Tabares), a high-ranking cartel member. ICE officials won't say how many cases Ramirez helped solve.

During former U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's tenure, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas moved Santillan's 2005 trial to San Antonio. Santillan agreed to plead guilty to drug-trafficking charges and was not charged for any of the slayings he allegedly ordered in Juárez. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

According to government indictments, Ramirez gave U.S. agencies a wealth of information about the Carrillo Fuentes drug organization.

After leaving the highway department, documents said, he worked with Colombian drug dealers, helping to fill orders for drugs destined for Juárez, Mexicali, Tijuana, Culiacan and Guadalajara. Later, he worked under Santillan for the Carrillo Fuentes cartel. Along the way, documents show, he met Arturo "Chaky" Hernandez, a notorious enforcer for the Juárez drug cartel, who is serving a prison term in Mexico.
Ramirez said Rafael Muñoz Talavera had recruited people from the state of Coahuila state to help him topple the Carrillo Fuenteses, who were from Sinaloa state.

Muñoz, whom the DEA considers an original founder of the Juárez drug cartel, was wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with the seizure of 20 tons of cocaine found in 1989 in a Los Angeles-area warehouse. He was found dead in Juárez in 1998. Ramirez said around this time, the Carrillo Fuentes organization ordered the kidnappings of about 70 people in and around Juárez.

Brothers Amado and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes took over the Juárez smuggling corridor in 1993, after Rafael Aguilar Guajardo was murdered in Cancun.

Before his death, Aguilar, a Juárez native and federal police commander, was the Juárez cartel kingpin. He lived in a house with his family in West El Paso.

The informant said he also met Miguel Loya Gallegos, a Chihuahua state police commander in Juárez, who trafficked drugs and carried out hits for the cartel, according to a federal government document.

In the document, Ramirez mentioned a "big brother" guesthouse in Juárez that cartel leaders used for meetings to settle accounts and plan kidnappings and murders. The address was omitted.

During his involvement with Santillan and Loya, Ramirez said he was sent to a house in Juárez where a lawyer named Fernando Reyes Aguado was to be killed so that Loya could steal drugs from him.

The lawyer "began to struggle with the (state) judicial police, and they asked me to help them get him to the floor," Ramirez said. "They tried to choke him (with) an extension cord, but this broke and I gave them a plastic bag and they put it on his head and suffocated him.

"I asked the judicial police if they were sure Fernando was dead, upon which (one of the policemen) took a ... shovel and hit him many times on the head until he was sure that he was dead."

Ramirez, who was wearing a wire and recorded the 2003 murder for ICE, received $2,000 from Santillan as payment for him and others to bury the bodies. Eleven more murders occurred during his ICE mission related to Santillan, Loya and the Juárez house. He also received $220,000 from the U.S. government for his services as an informant, according to documents.

U.S. authorities indicted other alleged co-conspirators of Santillan, including Ismael Bueno, 52, of Hereford, Texas; Jesus Rodriguez Rodriguez, 37, of Durango, Mexico; and Homero Nevarez Montoya, 24, of Chicago, who are in U.S. custody.

Loya was indicted in absentia, along with Edmundo Castillo Flores, 51, of Torreon, Mexico; Jesus "Chato" Delgado, 41, of El Paso; Chris Sepulveda, 24, of El Paso; Arturo Bustillos, 39, of Horizon City; Miguel Loya Gallegos, 35, of Juárez; and three men only identified as "Julio," "Ramon" and "Manuel Lujan."

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com





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