http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/met ... 71583.html

Sept. 7, 2006, 10:43PM
U.S. trying to deport ex-drug informant
Accused of overseeing deaths at a safe house, he fears he will be killed in Mexico


By JAMES PINKERTON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

HARLINGEN — The U.S. government is trying to deport one of its once-trusted drug informants, undermining a civil lawsuit charging that American authorities failed to prevent a dozen or more homicides at the Mexican safe house where the informant once worked.

Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, who earned more than $200,000 while informing on the Juarez drug cartel, is certain he'll be killed if he is sent back to Mexico, his lawyer said.

"He fears being tortured or killed if he returns to Mexico," said Jodi Goodwin, a Harlingen immigration attorney who in June asked a federal appeals court to overturn an earlier decision to deport Ramirez.

Officials at the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Antonio refuse to talk about it.

''We have no comment on the matter," spokesman Daryl Fields said.

Ramirez, 35, a Mexican highway policeman turned drug trafficker, oversaw a cartel safe house in the border town of Juarez, across the border from El Paso. And he held the keys to the safe house as traffickers went on a brutal spree, killing and burying at least a dozen of their enemies on the property, according to court documents and former agents.

Dallas lawyer Raul Loya filed a wrongful death lawsuit in December 2005 in federal court in El Paso, alleging that the informant's supervisors at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, knew the slayings were taking place and failed to stop them.

Loya wants Ramirez held as a material witness, not deported.

"The government wants him deported because as soon as he walks across the border, he'll be dead," said Loya, who represents the surviving family of Luis Padilla and seven other victims. ''That's because he's the primary witness against the government, and the only one who can corroborate a lot of the things in the lawsuit."

'A greater danger'
Sandalio Gonzalez, the former agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in El Paso, agrees and alleges that U.S. officials want to deport Ramirez to cover up their own misdeeds.

Gonzalez claims he was forced to leave the DEA after he distributed a memo in February 2004 blasting ICE's handling of the informant. But ''forget about what happened to me," he said from his home in Florida. "I see a greater danger to the country, to the nation as a whole, if our own government agents are allowed to get away with something like this. Then we're just as bad as the crooks, or even worse."

The former DEA agent's memo, first published by reporter Bill Conroy of the Web site Narcosphere, accuses ICE agents of mishandling Ramirez and allowing him "to continue on an unabated crime spree while under their so-called control."

The memo describes Ramirez as a ''homicidal maniac" and alleges that he took part in the first slaying at the safe house — which Narcosphere dubbed "The House of Death" — on Aug. 5, 2003.

Ramirez, now being held at an undisclosed jail in the Midwest, denied that accusation in an interview with WFAA-TV of Dallas-Fort Worth.

"I'm not a killer," he said.

Twelve victims — most of them tortured and smothered with plastic bags over their heads — were found at the house in early 2004.

When cartel henchmen asked their underlings to prepare a "carne asada," or barbecue, for so-and-so, that meant they were going to kill them.


'Carne asadas'
Ramirez, nicknamed Lalo, told WFAA that his U.S. government bosses knew that he was overseeing the safe house and helped prepare it for at least a dozen "carne asadas" that occurred there from August 2003 to January 2004.

The Gonzalez memo, which was also sent to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton in San Antonio, said ICE superiors ignored the DEA's advice to ''take down" or end the case after their informant allegedly took part in the first killing.

The memo also said the informant continued the operation in Juarez, allowing at least 13 other slayings to take place "in what can only be described as a display of total disregard for human life."

Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, an admitted top boss in the Juarez cartel, was arrested and charged with five of the slayings committed in the House of Death.


Deal for top boss
In April 2005, Sutton struck a plea bargain with Santillan: He pled guilty to running a criminal enterprise and accepted a 25-year prison sentence. In exchange, the murder charges were dropped.

U.S. officials declined to talk about the plea; Sutton said in a news release, ''Mexico has a superior interest in prosecuting those responsible" for the deaths.

Gonzalez said he fears nothing will come of his efforts to ensure that the U.S. government is held accountable in the House of Death case. The Inspector General of the Justice Department and congressional subcommittees have turned him down, he said.

''The legislative branch needs to do its job and oversee the executive branch," he said. ''The only way to salvage any kind of honor for the government ... is whatever committee that has oversight needs to assign an independent investigator."

Charles Bowden, a Tucson author who has written several books about Mexico's drug trade, calls the case bizarre.

"It's a freak circumstance, not that it happened, but that it ever saw the light of day," he said.

''There's a rule the cops have, an axiom that says, 'You run the informant, and the informant doesn't run you.' In this case, it's pretty clear the informant ran the cops."

Loya said the U.S. Attorney General's Office provides specific guidelines on the use of informants, and prohibits them from breaking the law while they are helping agents enforce the law.

''You can't have an informant with a firearm, let alone a full arsenal of weapons and a house, and let him kill indiscriminately," he said.

And agents have a duty to stop a crime if they know it will occur, he said.


Cigarette smuggling
ICE agents did not shut down the House of Death, Loya claims, because Ramirez was not only an informant, he was a witness in a cigarette smuggling case.

"In this case, they just didn't care," Loya said. ''They were more interested in pursuing a contraband cigarette case and trying to make inroads into the cartel than actually protecting human life."

Ramirez, meanwhile, is hoping to avoid deportation to Mexico.

Because he's an admitted drug trafficker, he does not qualify for asylum. But his lawyer, Goodwin, argues that his deportation would violate a U.N. treaty preventing the return of persons who have a credible fear of being tortured.

The Department of Homeland Security ''insists the record contains no evidence that Mr. Ramirez would be tortured by Mexican law enforcement" or by drug traffickers acting with the acquiescence of Mexican police, according to Goodwin's petition to the appeals court.

james.pinkerton@chron.com