Thread: Tancredo – Memo to President Trump: Two Border Patrol Patriots Still Awaiting Justice

by TOM TANCREDO
1 May 2017

While Americans are applauding President Trump’s 180-degree turn from the immigration and border security policies of the Obama years, the president should take time to correct a grievous 10-years-old mistake from the Bush dynasty as well.

I am speaking about the Justice Department’s prosecution — and I would add, persecution — of two Border Patrol agents, Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. The case is a good lesson in how the vast powers of the federal government can be deployed for narrow political purposes, not the ends of justice.

In February of 2005, Border Patrol officers Ramos and Compean were patrolling the Rio Grande border near Fabens, Texas. They encountered a van near the river that was behaving suspiciously, so they gave chase. The driver abandoned the vehicle and its almost 800-pound load of drugs and fled on foot toward the river. Agent Compean caught up with him, and a fight ensued, but the man escaped and continued running toward the border. Agent Ramos arrived on the scene, and both of them pursued the fleeing smuggler. When they saw the man turn and wave “a shiny object” which they thought was a gun, they opened fire at him. Both agents said later they did not realize at the time that a shot had hit the smuggler in the buttocks because the man kept running and disappeared into Mexico.

Weeks after the shooting occurred and as result of demands from the Mexican government, a Homeland Security Department’s inquiry was launched, and soon after that Ramos and Compean were put on trial. They were both found guilty of discharging a firearm during the commission of a violent crime! Compean received a 12-year sentence, and Ramos got 11 years.

The smuggler was a Mexican named Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, who was portrayed in court testimony as not a career drug smuggler but someone who had merely consented to smuggle this single load to get money to pay his mother’s medical bills. That fairy tale was adopted not only by the smuggler and his family but also by the prosecuting U.S. Attorney to paint the drug smuggler as the innocent victim of Border Patrol brutality and criminal behavior. And get this. In exchange for his testimony against the two agents who shot him, the smuggler was given a visa to let him have easy entry into the U.S. He then used the visa to help him deliver a second load of drugs! This time it was over 750 pounds of Marijuana, and he was armed when he was caught.

That arrest was never allowed to be admitted into the Ramos-Compean trial.

Two Texas congressmen, Ted Poe and John Culbertson, told CNN in 2007 that the truth of the matter was that Ramos and Compean had been the victim of a cover-up by the Border Patrol’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and that the DHS Inspector General had admitted lying to them about the case.

I followed the trial closely at the time and later visited personally with Ignacio Ramos after his incarceration in a federal prison in Ohio. Earlier while in a Mississippi federal facility, he had been beaten by five Hispanic inmates who recognized him from news accounts of the trial.

In July of 2007, both Senate and House committees investigated the matter.

A petition collected over 200,000 signatures asking for a pardon from President Bush.

Senators Diana Feinstein and John Cornyn asked Bush for a commutation to time served and release from prison. He refused.

On the last day of his Presidency, Bush agreed to the calls for commutation. Of course commuting a sentence does not wipe out the crime. Only a pardon can do that. And that is what is needed for these two men whose lives, and the lives of their families have been shattered by being held as political prisoners after a kangaroo court trial.

The whole scandalous story of the malicious treatment of Ramos and Compean by U.S. government prosecutors was revealed by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher in a speech on the House floor on March 19, 2007.

I am asking you to join in the effort to persuade President Trump to grant that pardon. We can start with letters and calls to the White House and sympathetic Members of Congress. Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos are not “dreamers” and do not have the mainstream media and the entire Democrat Party arguing their case; they are Americans who deserve a huuuge “We are sorry and apologize for what happened to you.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...iting-justice/

Oh my Lord, I'd forgotten all about them after the commuted sentences. OH HELL YES!! Please President Trump, please, please, please pardon Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos!!!

Thank you Tom Tancredo for NOT forgetting about Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos!!

PARDON COMPEAN AND RAMOS NOW!!!

President Trump Asked to Pardon Former Border Patrol Agents Ramos, Compean

Facebook Photos

by BOB PRICE
30 Sep 2017Washington, DC

U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) penned a letter to President Donald Trump this week asking him to grant a pardon to former U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The two agents were prosecuted and convicted under the administration of then-President George W. Bush after shooting a fleeing drug-smuggling illegal alien.

Ramos and Compean were prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas Johnny Sutton in 2006. They were convicted and sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison.

President Bush eventually responded to the grass-roots groundswell of support for the agents and commuted their sentence on his final day in office. The men were eventually released from prison and have since filed an application for a presidential pardon.

In the letter to President Trump (attached below), Rep. Hunter wrote, “Mr. President, Agents Compean’s and Ramos’ sentences were commuted in 2009 by then-President Bush, but I believe that they deserve every consideration for a pardon due to the circumstances of the incident and I respectfully request that you instruct the Office of the Pardon Attorney to provide their cases full and fast attention.”

Hunter laid out the details surrounding the incident where Ramos and Compean shot Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, an illegal alien who was later sentenced to nine years in prison for smuggling drugs. The congressman wrote:

The charges for which these federal officers were ultimately convicted related to an incident where multiple Border Patrol agents were in pursuit of a van that had entered the US illegally in an area very well known for illicit drug smuggling activity. The driver of the van, later identified as an illegal alien named Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, continued to evade the agents and drove at a dangerous high rate of speed to a levee where he could cross back into Mexico. Agent Compean was the first to reach the van where he began pursuing Aldrete-Davila on foot. At some point a hand-to-hand struggle ensued and Aldrete-Davila managed to bring Agent Compean to the ground.

As Agent Ramos approached the area, he heard shots fired but his view of the altercation was initially obscured by the landscape. Aldrete-Davila broke free and both agents fired at him because he turned back towards them before he began to run towards the border. It was later discovered that when Ramos discharged his weapon, he hit Aldrete-Davila in the buttocks. At the time of the shooting, however, it was not apparent that Aldrete- Davila had been injured as he was able to escape and run across the international border to a waiting vehicle. After the incident it was discovered that the van contained more than 740 pounds of marijuana and, despite this, Aldrete-Davila received immunity from the smuggling charges in exchange for providing testimony against Agents Ramos and Compean. Aldrete-Davila was later arrested at the US border for trying to again smuggle a large quantity of drugs
into the US and received a nine year prison sentence.

“We’re saying a lot of prayers,” Ramos told Breitbart Texas on Friday.
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/...ramos-compean/