Thread: Man shot by jailed ex-border agents tells his story

I apologize if this is a repost but I couldn't find it on the site anywhere. I wrote the author after I read the story. We now have stories sympathetic to the scumbag that got off scott free and got our border guards jailed. You can see my comments to the author after the article.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/search//ci_5842391

Man shot by jailed ex-border agents tells his story
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times

JUAREZ -- The man at the center of a case that has outraged U.S. conservatives and become a cause célebre on cable news shows lives in a white one-room house with a neat yard in the Valley of Juárez.
In his village, most people know Osvaldo Aldrete Davila. They know that in 2005 he was shot in the buttocks by two El Paso Border Patrol agents while trying to smuggle a load of marijuana just across the border, near Fabens. The agents, Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, were sentenced to 12 and 11 years in prison and started serving their sentences earlier this year.

In the village, neighbors walk by Aldrete Davila's little house and wave.

But in the United States, supporters of the agents, who include anti-immigrant groups, conservative congressmen, cable news personalities and countless bloggers, have called him a "heinous criminal," a "doper," a "dirt bag" and much worse.

Aldrete, who asked not to be photographed and that his exact location not be revealed for safety reasons, is well aware of his reviled status in the United States.

He has seen the bikers' rallies in support of Compean and Ramos on the local news. His former colleagues from his days as a truck driver call him to say, "Hey, I saw this and that on the Internet about you," he said.

His critics, he said, don't know the whole story.

"They (the agents) talk (to the media). I don't talk. So people don't know," he said. "I know it was wrong what I did, but I'm paying for it with my health. People don't know how it is for me to go to the bathroom, how painful it is."

Aldrete Davila's urethra was shattered by the bullet two years ago, and he still lives with a rubber tube sticking out of his belly button that connects his bladder to a plastic bag.

The agents are now appealing their conviction from behind bars, while their supporters still push for a presidential pardon and a long-promised congressional hearing into what they see as an overzealous prosecution of law enforcement officers who were just doing their jobs.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said such a hearing was in the investigative phase and was expected to take place the first two weeks of June.

No work

In Juárez, Aldrete Davila, a slim 26-year-old married man with two children, struggles with the daily indignities of living with a catheter and a urine collection bag.

The bag fills up so quickly he has to get up 10 times a night, he said. Defecating is excruciating, he said.

But the worst has been work -- Aldrete Davila hasn't had any in two years, he said.

Recently, he and his wife applied for a job at a harness manufacturing plant. She was hired. He wasn't.

"I used to be the bread winner. She never had to work. I took care of her. My truck was parked outside. People could see that I was working. And now there is no more truck. I understand when both the husband and the wife work, but the wife working and the husband staying home? Do you know what that does to a man's self-esteem?" he said, leaning against the white-washed wall of his house, his petite wife by his side.

"My wife has been very supportive. She said not to worry," he said.

These days, Aldrete Davila makes a few pesos fixing car engines for neighbors. He installed one water heater and crafted wooden shutters for someone else. And he takes his children, ages 7 and 5, to school every day. The family wouldn't make it, he said, without financial help from family members.

Aldrete Davila was born in this village, in the Valley of Juárez, where small farmers struggle to grow cotton with wastewater irrigation while many of their neighbors dedicate themselves to drug smuggling and migrant smuggling.

Aldrete Davila graduated from high school and became a truck driver, taking maquiladora shipments to El Paso and back, he said.

He takes great offense at being referred to as a "drug smuggler," he said, because he only did it once.

"It was a moment of weakness, out of desperation," he said.

The story he told Department of Homeland Security investigators who came to look for him in Mexico in 2005 was that he needed to make quick money to renew his commercial driver's license, his livelihood.

Defense attorneys for the agents have said they greatly doubted that Aldrete Davila would have been entrusted with about 700 pounds of marijuana -- which is worth $140,000 in El Paso, and much more elsewhere -- on his first try.

That day

Aldrete Davila said he was promised $1,000 -- he won't say by whom -- to walk across the Rio Grande on Feb. 17, 2005, and get into a gray Ford Econoline van waiting for him with the keys in the ignition.

"I didn't know exactly what was in the van. I didn't look. But, you know, I knew it was bad," he said.

Aldrete Davila was supposed to link up with a guide vehicle that would take him to a stash house in or near Fabens. Instead, he was spotted and chased back to the river by the Border Patrol. He crashed the van on a levee and started running south, toward Mexico.

Agent Compean shot at him several times and Agent Ramos, once, hitting him. Then Compean picked up his shell casings and both agents failed to report the shooting to their superiors, only reporting the drug seizure. They were convicted of violating Aldrete Davila's civil rights and of tampering with evidence. Three other agents lost their jobs over the incident. They were either at the scene or heard of the shooting later but did not report it. Like Aldrete Davila, they were given immunity to testify for the prosecution.

Weeks after the shooting, when the investigation had started, Compean said he thought he saw a gun in the smuggler's hand.

Aldrete Davila said on the witness stand and again recently that he did not have a gun because he knew that if he was caught, he would face severe penalties for having a gun.

Aldrete Davila said the agents were wrong to shoot him.

But he said he found the sentences given to them excessive. The agents received 10-year mandatory sentences because they used a weapon in the commission of their crime. Aldrete Davila said he didn't know what would have been a more appropriate punishment.

"I feel bad for everybody. For my wife and children and for the agents' families and their children. I wouldn't want my children not to have parents for 10 years," he said.

Joe Loya, Ramos' father-in-law and a spokesman for the family, was not mollified by Aldrete Davila's sympathetic words.

"He should feel bad about that because two innocent agents are sitting in jail," he said. "He had a choice. The agents didn't have a choice. They were put into a situation because of his drug smuggling. He has devastated the lives of two families and continues to lie (about not having a gun)."

But he also said, "I feel sorry for his children because I feel sorry for my grandchildren (Ramos' children). Who suffers here? The wives, the children, the families."

Open questions

The case continues to be a hot topic on CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and last month, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, brought it up while questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during high-profile hearings on the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rekindling interest was the recent revelation that Aldrete Davila, the self-proclaimed one-time smuggler, may have been involved in a second smuggling incident.

In March, Congressman Rohrabacher showed reporters a copy of a report by the Drug Enforcement Administration that said a Clint man who allowed drug dealers to use his house to stash drugs had identified Aldrete Davila as one of the people who brought him drugs in October 2005, eight months after the shooting.

The U.S Attorney's office had only given Aldrete Davila immunity for the Feb. 17, 2005, smuggling. Officials have left the door open for a possible prosecution of Aldrete Davila for the second, alleged incident.

Asked whether he worried that he'd be arrested, Aldrete Davila said, "I am clean. I have nothing to worry about."

He said he now focuses on how to get medical help.

Getting the bullet removed from his thigh in 2005 was his only motivation for testifying against the agents, he said. U.S. investigators took Aldrete Davila to Beaumont Army Medical Center to retrieve the bullet, a key piece of evidence in the case.

Now, getting some money to rebuild his urethra is the only reason he filed a multi million lawsuit against the U.S. federal government, he said. Aldrete Davila said several Mexican hospitals have asked him for at least $30,000 for the operation -- a sum that's well beyond his means.

If he finds the money, he said, he would prefer the operation to take place in Mexico, rather than in the United States.

"Everybody hates me there (in America)," he said.

Louie Gilot may be reached at lgilot@elpasotimes.com; 546-6131.

My comments to the author:

"Everybody hates me there (in America)," he said.

Well, that's probably close to true. I hate him, my neighbors hate him, clear headed Americans hate him.

It's pretty obvious you don't hate him.

I read this article with disbelief. I thought I'd seen the worst of slanted journalism but this takes the cake. You portrayed this scummy piece of garbage as some kind of hero. Are you insane? He's a liar and a drug smuggler, a complete loser.

I worry about the state of journalism today. There is NO objectivity left.

You seem to forget that regardless if the border agents were right or wrong, he wouldn't have been shot if he hadn't been smuggling drugs into a foreign country.

I feel zero pity for him, so what, his butt hurts! Boo Hoo.

I have pity for people who have a catheter because of a medical condition, not because they are drug smugglers.

I don't believe for one second he only smuggled once.

I have to say, if journalism required a license, yours should be revoked.

The only thing I feel sorry for about this creep is that he wasn't shot in the head. He's nothing but a worthless, lowlife scumbag, smuggling drugs into the country to poison our children and then expecting people to feel sorry for him for what he brought on himself.

Other reports I have heard say that this guy was a seasoned drug smuggler, and always carried a gun, according to his colleagues in crime. They say he would never smuggle such a huge load without protection, so he always had a gun with him. And how does a person who never did this before get trusted with a load of 750 Lbs.?

He is a lying criminal, and now he wants millions of our taxpayer dollars to pay him for his suffering? Go to hell, amigo. Let your drug smuggling cartel pay for your operation, after all you were shot on the job, you should have gotten smuggler's comp before you decided to break the law.

He takes great offense at being referred to as a "drug smuggler," he said, because he only did it once.
John and Ken hate this guy too. They've talked about him on their radio show a number of times... almost every time they talk about him they mention the fact that while the trial was going on - he was picked up for smuggling drugs again. That was pushed under the rug by the lawyers because it wouldn't be good for their star witness' credibility.

I've never read that anywhere, but John and Ken have the bullhorn of truth so i believe 'em.

I stopped reading there, though. I didn't trust the piece of crap when i started the article, and there was no reason to continue when the author is going to blatantly lie as well.

One more perpetual victim from south of the border, but he only has himself to blame. Had he taken the high road to try to make that money and gotten hurt despite his honesty, some might feel compassion for him, but this is not one of those times.

I worry about the state of journalism today. There is NO objectivity left.

This is definitely true with the main stream newspapers and television.