Testimony: Man shot by agents continued to smuggle
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 11/29/2007 11:23:46 AM MST

The day Osvaldo Aldrete Davila was shot in the buttock while running back to Mexico in 2005 was not the last time he was chased by the Border Patrol and not the last time he delivered drugs in the United States that year, a witness said at a hearing today.

Robert Holguin, a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent said on the stand that three men had identified Aldrete as a habitual drug smuggler.

Two of these men where only referred to as "Source 2" and "Source 3," a drug smuggler and a friend not involved in drug smuggling. They allegedly told DEA investigators that Aldrete tried, unsuccessfully, to smuggle marijuana on Sept. 24, 2005, and again, successfully, on Oct. 22, 2005.

Source 2 "was aware Davila was a transporter for a Mexican smuggler," Agent Holguin said during a bond hearing for Aldrete today.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Mesa postponed his decision on bond for a few weeks because Aldrete's lawyer, Ruben Hernandez, said he wanted to add documentary evidence to the file. Hernandez did not say what this evidence was.

Aldrete testified for the U.S. Attorney's office in the case against El Paso Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, the two agents who shot him Feb. 17, 2005. Ramos and Compean were convicted of violating Aldrete's civil rights and of tampering with evidence because they did not report the shooting and because Compean picked up his shell casings.

Aldrete, who had been driving a van loaded with marijuana near the river levee before he started running, was offered immunity for his testimony. The immunity covered only his activities during the Feb. 17 incident. He was also given permission to cross into the United States to meet with prosecutors, testify and get medical attention.

The shooting left him with a severed urethra, and Aldrete had been urinating through a plastic tube sticking out of his belly button and connected to a plastic bag he carried with him.

According to Agent Holguin's sworn testimony, Aldrete continued to smuggle drugs, despite his medical condition and his deal with the U.S. government.