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Bush's war on law enforcement

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Posted: April 13, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Glynn Custred


The case of two Border Patrol agents, Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, has attracted wide public attention. The two agents were tried by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for violating the "civil rights" of a smuggler caught transporting nearly 800 pounds of illegal drugs into the country. Believing the smuggler was armed and was turning to fire on them, the agents discharged their weapons, apparently wounding the perpetrator as he escaped across the border. U.S. authorities sought the smuggler in Mexico and brought him back to the United States not for prosecution, but as a witness to testify against the two agents.

The smuggler continued to ply his illicit trade while Johnny Sutton engaged in alleged prosecutorial misconduct in trying the two agents. Both agents are now in federal prison where one was attacked and beaten by illegal-alien inmates. This is only one in a series of cases in which law enforcement officers who have used force in the performance of their duties were charged with violating the civil rights of smugglers and human traffickers who threatened or resisted the officers.

Another case is that of David Sipe, a Border Patrol agent in South Texas. Sipe was prosecuted for striking a smuggler with a flashlight during an altercation. The agent was found guilty, but when it was revealed that the federal prosecutors had tampered with the evidence, the judge ordered a new trial. Six and a half years later, with his marriage and his finances in ruins, Sipe was found innocent by a jury of his peers. He is now seeking reinstatement against stiff opposition from the Bush administration. In the meantime, the smuggler sued the U.S. government and was awarded 80,000 taxpayer dollars in restitution.

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U.S. attorneys have fixed their sites on law officers from other agencies as well. Robert Rhodes, a customs inspector on the Canadian border, was tried for violating the civil rights of a Chinese national when he used mace to subdue her when she vigorously resisted arrest. Although the person in question is notorious for human trafficking, it was the customs agent who was prosecuted in what the defense council described as the most vicious prosecution he had ever seen. Rhodes, like Sipe, has applied for reinstatement. Like Sipe, his application is strongly opposed by the Bush administration.

The latest case involves Deputy Sheriff Gilmer Hernandez from Rocksprings, Texas. Hernandez observed a van running a red light in the early hours of the morning. When Hernandez attempted to stop the driver, who was transporting illegal aliens, he tried to run the deputy down. Hernandez responded by shooting out the tires of the van and in so doing inadvertently injured one of the passengers. Johnny Sutton, repeating his MO in the Ramos-Compean case, prosecuted the deputy for a civil-rights violation of the illegal alien in the van who had been slightly injured. Hernandez has been sentenced to a year in prison.

The cases of Compean and Ramos, Sipe, Rhodes and now Hernandez reveal a clear pattern: the illegal application and the distortion by U.S. attorneys in the Bush administration of civil-rights laws to create a crime where none existed and, where possible, to increase the sentence by distorting federal firearms law. What we see in all of those cases is the violation of the civil rights of American citizens by Bush prosecutors by means of malicious prosecutions using misapplied laws and by tampering with evidence.

Bush's "war on law enforcement," as it has been called by Friends of the Border Patrol Chairman Andy Ramirez, has a chilling effect on law enforcement officers everywhere, for it sends the message that if you use force in attempting to prevent smugglers and traffickers from plying their trade, it is the officers, not the criminals, who will go to prison.

If that is not bad enough, the smugglers are then given a free hand to sue, not only the federal government with its deep pockets, but also the hapless officers, compounding the abuse that the Bush administration has heaped upon those who try to do their duty. The threat to law enforcement officers is real, and the consequences can be devastating to them.

Colluding with foreign governments

Even more disturbing is another element in this pattern of wrongful prosecution: collusion with foreign governments in the violation of the civil rights of American citizens. In the case of Robert Rhodes, the government involved was Communist China. Eager to blunt American criticism of China's human rights violations, the Chinese demanded that Rhodes be punished. The Bush administration was all too willing to comply. The other prosecutions were all initiated at the insistence or with the active participation of the Mexican government.

It is not surprising that Bush is colluding with Mexico to keep the border open. His words and actions clearly indicate that pleasing the Mexican elite is one of his high priorities. One might ask, though, why he would act so quick to follow the same policy with China.

James Mann, former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and author of three books on China, gives us some indication in his latest book, "The China Fantasy." Mann tells us that the elites in the United States overlook the repression of the China's one-party system, distorting the actions of the Chinese government in the interest of both diplomatic stability and relative predictability and commercial profit for American companies. For those reasons, it appears that the elites in the United States prefer it this way. The unjust prosecution of Robert Rhodes thus makes sense in that context.

What is Congress doing about it?

These abuses cry out for congressional investigation. Many in Congress, such as Ted Poe from Texas, agree and have requested investigations to uncover the truth. With eight years experience as a prosecutor and another 22 years as a judge, Poe can tell when something is amiss and has repeatedly said that there is something wrong with the prosecutions of law enforcement officers on the Mexican border. Yet congressional leaders have steadfastly refused to allow any hearings to go forward, even though they are well aware of the facts.

For example, the House Judiciary Committee was apprised of the facts in the case of Ramos and Compean in 2006 when Ramirez testified before the committee. Ramirez received bipartisan support for his request for hearings, and James Sensenbrenner, Republican from Wisconsin, then chairman of the committee, promised publicly that hearings would be held. Sensenbrenner even issued a charter, a House procedure to authorize the proceedings. Sensenbrenner, however, purposely delayed the hearings until after the elections when he would no longer be chairman, thereby letting himself off the hook.

Sources in Washington have told Friends of the Border Patrol that Sensenbrenner reneged on his promise because he was strong-armed by the White House. Other members of Congress have also been strong-armed on related issues. For example, the 9/11 commission recommended a measure, later passed by Congress as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, intended to ensure tamper-proof identification documents for travel between the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. The provision was to have gone into effect in 2007. Under White House pressure, it was postponed until 2009. Indeed, the Bush administration has stubbornly and consistently blocked any border security measures, from safe documents to effective border management, even to the point of cooperating with foreign governments in prosecuting American law enforcement officers in the performance of their assigned duties, at the expense of national security.

When the Democrats took over Congress it was hoped that partisanship would work the other way. And indeed, for a while it looked as if hearings in the case of Compean and Ramos would finally take place. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., now chair of the Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was given permission by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to hold hearings on the case. The hearings were scheduled for Feb. 27, 2007. This was an encouraging sign.

Feinstein's instincts are sound when it comes to civil rights, immigration and the border. It was hoped that her hearings would be fair and thorough. Again, such hopes were dashed when the hearings were abruptly postponed and in March finally abandoned. The excuse given for abandoning the hearings was that the committee preferred to await the outcome of the appeal before looking into the matter. There has been some talk of hearings on the Ramos Compean case in the House, but only in regard to the part played by the Mexican government in the prosecutions. So far, nothing substantive has materialized.

Purposely missing the point

Why are the Democrats as reluctant as Republicans to look into these malicious prosecutions by the Bush administration? One answer is that good government has nothing to do with the plans of the Democratic congressional leadership. In fact, governing seems to have taken a back seat to their "get Bush" campaign. One tactic they are employing is the creation of a scandal over the firings of eight US attorneys. Ironically, one of those attorneys is Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego who Feinstein herself has denounced for refusing to deal appropriately with criminals entering the country illegally. Now, Feinstein is crying foul when Lam is fired ostensibly for that very reason.

Any president can, at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all, fire a U.S. attorney. Indeed, Clinton took the unprecedented step of firing 93 U.S. attorneys to get rid of the one in Little Rock who was closing in on a real scandal, Clinton's Whitewater dealings. The president then replaced the troublesome attorney with one of his protégés. That should have been a scandal, but wasn't.

Two people central in the fate of the eight U.S. attorneys were White House attorney Harriet Miers and former aid to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Kyle Sampson. On March 29, 2007, Sampson testified under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, telling the committee that the removals as far as he knew were not motivated in an effort to thwart investigations or prosecutions of Republicans for illegal activity, nor is there any evidence that this was the motive. The reason for the firings was that the attorneys did not support the law enforcement priorities of the president.

Sampson did admit that the removals were ill considered. And indeed, some of them were. The removals were executed with such a heavy hand that even Republican senators were upset. As Newt Gingrich sees it, "this is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess that I can remember in the years I've been active in public life."

By exploiting the mendacity and the inherent incompetence of the Bush administration, the Democrats have tried to make these perfectly legal, but badly handled firings look like a scandal while ignoring the real crime of the Bush administration's willful misconduct in prosecuting American law enforcement officers at the behest of foreign governments.

The concocted issue of the eight fired U.S. attorneys is safer for Democrats than an investigation of real crimes committed by the Bush Department of Justice, for those real scandals would distract the left, their enablers and their sympathizers in the Democratic Party from their attempts at replaying Vietnam in Iraq. Investigations would also draw unwanted attention to the problem of mass migration, for the left and the Democratic Party, for different reasons, are as intent as is Bush on maintaining the historically unprecedented flood of immigration into the United States, whether legal or illegal.

Another reason for the reluctance of the Democrats is that an investigation might actually lead to impeachment, thus derailing their strategy of slowly bleeding the administration to death over the next two years to insure a Democrat takeover in the 2008 election.

And then there is the ugly stain of old-fashioned corruption that would likely be uncovered in such an investigation. The drug cartels have already corrupted the Mexican government and, with the tools of their trade in hand, have found their way across the border. Bribery, extortion and intimidation are seeping into our political system from south of the border. Who knows how far up into the Bush administration and, perhaps, if the indicators are accurate, into the ranks of Democrats such corruption goes? Democrats in Congress would rather not know anything about that.

Ignoring reality at our peril

There is also a wider context in which to view Bush's prosecution of American law enforcement officers. In recent decades, millions of Mexicans have moved from farms and villages into Mexico's urban centers, creating pressures for change that jeopardize the privileged position of Bush's allies, the Mexican elites, among whom are some of the richest people in the world. The Mexican elites thus prefer to avoid the risk inherent in change by exporting what they consider their excess population to the United States. And Bush, with his transnational perspective, is doing everything he can to support those efforts.

China, too, has undergone a huge demographic shift. Over the past 20 years, some 250 million people have moved from rural districts into urban centers. The Chinese elite do not enjoy Mexico's advantage of sharing a border with the U.S. and is thus unable to dump its unwanted people on this country as does the Mexican elite. Instead, the elites in China create jobs by exploiting low wages, even underbidding Mexico, a country that has traditionally regarded low wages as their main economic asset.

When manufacturers in the United States decide to bring a new product on the market, the decision is made on the basis of market need and the expectation of profit. In China, manufacturing decisions are made by the centralized authoritarian government with different calculations, namely the creation of low-paying jobs compounded by bad working conditions and indifference to the environment as a means of keeping the lid on an increasingly perilous demographic and social dynamic.

Analyst Herbert Meyer describes the relationship between the United States and China as "economic codependency." If we stopped buying from China, they would explode politically, and if China didn't sell to us, prices in the United States would jump, causing momentary economic dislocations. This codependency is not mutually beneficial, nor is it sustainable. It is not mutually beneficial because we are in effect subsidizing the repression of the Chinese people at an eventual cost to future generations of Americans. At the same time, we are discouraging economic growth and social equality in Mexico by acting as a willing safety-valve for pressures that if properly channeled might result in positive social change and greater prosperity south of the border. Such a situation is inherently instable for all concerned, and the consequences can be disastrous.

In China, pressure is building as seen in hundreds of disturbances every day all across the country, disturbances ranging from peaceful demonstrations to violent riots, sometimes rising to the level of insurrection. Social tensions are also rising in Mexico, and the mass exodus promoted by the Mexican elite and fully supported by Bush is already starting to cause dislocations in the Mexican economy. And in the United States, there is the question of how much our economy and the social cohesion of our nation can stand under the burden of mass unchecked migration from the Third World. In the meantime, Gilmer Hernandez goes to prison, Ignacio Ramos and Joseph Compean stay in prison, David Sipe and Robert Rhodes, found innocent of malicious and false charges, have not been given their jobs back or restitution for what they have suffered at the hands of Bush and his underlings. And what about Bush, his henchmen and the Congress? The administration continues to get by with abuse of the justice system while Congress fritters away its time and our resources on concocted partisan issues instead of attending to the nation's business. The result is that American sovereignty is increasingly diluted, and the bonds of citizenship, national cohesion and national identity weakened, thereby threatening the very foundations of the nation state that has served the American people so well for over 200 years.



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