Thread: Imprisoned ex-agent welcomes arrest of smuggler

Published: 11.23.2007

Imprisoned ex-agent welcomes arrest of smuggler
PHOENIX – The wife of one of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug smuggler said Wednesday that he's elated by the smuggler's recent arrest.
Meanwhile, supporters are calling for the ex-agents to be released from prison.
The agents were convicted of failing to report the shooting and trying to cover it up.
Monica Ramos was allowed to visit her husband, Ignacio Ramos, for seven hours Wednesday at the federal prison north of Phoenix.
Ramos said her husband was "pretty elated" about the arrest last week of the smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, on federal charges related to smuggling marijuana into the United States several months after he was shot on the Texas border near El Paso in February 2005.
"His spirits are good," Ramos said of her husband of 12 years. "We're taking it day by day."
Monica Ramos said her husband's prospects for a successful appeal or possible parole or commutation of his 11-year prison sentence could be helped by newly disclosed information on Aldrete's criminal smuggling history.
Ramos said her husband was transferred in July to the Arizona prison where he's confined in a segregation unit and only allowed out of his one-inmate cell for an hour each weekday for recreation and not at all on weekends.
"They said it's for his protection," she said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
Ignacio Ramos, who began serving his prison term in January, was beaten by other inmates while in a federal prison in Mississippi after a television report on his case was aired.
Monica Ramos participated in a news conference in support of her husband and efforts by supporters to urge President Bush to either pardon both Ignacio Ramos and fellow ex-agent Jose Alonso Compean or to commute their sentences while they appeal their convictions.
Compean is serving a 12-year prison term.
Aldrete's shooting and the subsequent arrest and conviction of Ramos and Compean caused a national firestorm among conservative lawmakers and others who called the prosecution unjustified and the sentences extreme.
U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., and Republican congressional candidate Sydney Hay also participated in the news conference outside the prison.
"These men deserve a pardon or to have their sentences commuted," said Hay, a candidate in Arizona's 1st Congressional District. "Let's do it in time for the holidays."
In El Paso, a detention hearing for Aldrete was postponed Wednesday. His lawyer, Ruben Hernandez, declined to comment.
Aldrete has been held at the El Paso County Jail without bond since his arrest. He has appeared in court in a blue jail jumpsuit, shackled at the waist and ankles, with a colostomy bag hanging around his waist.
The single bullet that hit Aldrete in the buttocks severed his urethra.
An appeals court in New Orleans is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the two ex-agents' case on Dec. 3.
According to testimony at the agents' trial, Aldrete was shot after a struggle with Compean as Aldrete tried to make it back across the border. Compean fired more than a dozen shots while Ramos fired a single shot. It was Ramos' bullet that hit Aldrete.
Compean said he believed he saw a gun in Aldrete's hand during their confrontation. Aldrete insisted he was unarmed.
If convicted of the drug charges, Aldrete faces up to 40 years in prison and a $2 million fine.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/213036

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