An AP story on the near total absence of U.S. prosecution of people illegally entering the U.S., then, some background from World Net Daily on two American Border Patrol Agents who live in small cells without their families – in U.S. prison – for attempting to stop a drug smuggler from Mexico.

Welcome to the New America. Maybe another path to citizenship amnesty will stop this sort of thing?

Illegal border crossers rarely prosecuted

By Alicia A. Caldwell
Associated Press Writer

EL PASO, Texas – For all the tough talk out of Washington on immigration, illegal immigrants caught along the Mexican border have almost no reason to fear they will be prosecuted.

Ninety-eight percent of those arrested between Oct. 1, 2000, and Sept. 30, 2005, were never prosecuted for illegally entering the country, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data. Those 5.2 million immigrants were simply escorted back across the Rio Grande and turned loose. Many presumably tried to slip into the U.S. again.

The number of immigrants prosecuted annually tripled during that five-year period, to 30,848 in fiscal year 2005, the most recent figures available. But that still represented less than 3 percent of the 1.17 million people arrested that year. The prosecution rate was just under 1 percent in 2001.

The likelihood of an illegal immigrant being prosecuted is “to me, practically zero,” said Kathleen Walker, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Federal prosecutors along the nation’s southern border have come under pressure from politicians and from top officials in the Justice Department to pursue more cases against illegal immigrants.

But few politicians are seriously suggesting the government prosecute everyone caught slipping across the border. With about 1 million immigrants stopped each year, that would overwhelm the nation’s prisons, break the Justice Department’s budget and paralyze the courts, immigration experts say.

The Justice Department itself says it has higher priorities and too few resources to go after every ordinary illegal immigrant. Instead, the department says it pursues more selective strategies, such as going after immigrant smugglers and immigrants with criminal records.

T.J. Bonner, the union chief for Border Patrol agents, said the most effective solution would be to dry up job opportunities in the U.S. by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

“The employers are the ones breaking the law,” he said, suggesting the creation of an “idiot-proof” system to check the immigration status of workers and the prosecution of any employers who knowingly hire those in this country illegally.

“It’s much like our tax laws: People don’t pay their taxes out of an overriding sense of citizenship; it’s a healthy dose of fear,” Bonner said.

Under federal law, illegally entering the country is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and up to six months in prison for a first time. A second offense carries up to two years. If an immigrant has been prosecuted and deported and then sneaks back into the country, he can be charged with a felony punishable by up to two years behind bars. Those with criminal records can get 10 to 20 years.

The federal figures on arrests and prosecutions were collected and provided to the AP by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University in New York.

The number of illegal immigrants arrested at the border is dwarfed by the number who make it through. “For every person we catch, two or three get by us,” Bonner said.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement that 30 federal prosecutors have been added to the Southwestern border to handle the rising number of immigration and border drug cases and noted that securing more prosecutions would require hiring more judges and public defenders and building more courtrooms and jails.

Authorities also note that illegal immigrants who make it past the border are not necessarily home free. In the past year, immigration officials have conducted numerous raids on workplaces.

Boyd noted that the Border Patrol can charge illegal immigrants with civil violations punishable by fines of $50 to $250. But Border Patrol officials said most Mexican immigrants are not sent before a judge to be fined.

“The majority are offered and granted … voluntary removal back to Mexico,” said Xavier Rios, an assistant chief Border Patrol agent in Washington. “We don’t seek to prosecute everyone.”

Boyd said the Justice Department pursues charges if a case involves human smugglers, if an immigrant has a felony record in the U.S., or if he has been deported before.

“When you consider the other high-priority laws that the department is charged with enforcing, such as drug trafficking, firearms offenses, violent crime, national security, child pornography, and corporate fraud, the department is achieving a balance of immigration enforcement with other important areas,” Boyd said.

Last month an undated internal Justice Department memo released as part of the congressional investigation of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys revealed that in Texas, most illegal crossers have to be caught at least six times before their case will be forwarded to prosecutors.

Still, some border regions have decided to crack down.

Along the Border Patrol’s 210-mile Del Rio sector in West Texas, any illegal immigrant arrested since 2006 is jailed and prosecuted, under a federal project called Operation Streamline. It was briefly repeated along a narrow stretch of border in New Mexico. And Maricopa County, Ariz., officials are using a state anti-smuggling law to prosecute both suspected smugglers and the immigrants who pay them.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former state judge, said that the prosecution rates amount to “dereliction of duty” and that the government should spend whatever it takes to lock up and deport every illegal immigrant.

Read the rest here.

Border Patrol agents sentenced to prison 11-12 years for shooting drug-smuggling
suspect in buttocks as he fled across frontier
October 20, 2006
World Net Daily

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were sentenced to prison terms of 11 years and 12 years for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect in the buttocks as he fled across the U.S.-Mexico border.

U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, Texas, sentenced Jose Alonso Compean to 12 years in prison and Ignacio Ramos to 11 years and one day despite a plea by their attorney for a new trial after three jurors said they were coerced into voting guilty in the case, the Washington Times reported.

As WorldNetDaily reported, a federal jury convicted Compean, 28, and Ramos, 37, in March after a two-week trial on charges of causing serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and a civil rights violation.

Ramos is an eight-year veteran of the U.S. Naval Reserve and a former nominee for Border Patrol Agent of the Year.

On Feb. 17, 2005, he responded to a request for back up from Compean, who noticed a suspicious van near the levee road along the Rio Grande River near the Texas town of Fabens, about 40 miles east of El Paso.

Ramos, who headed toward Fabens hoping to cut off the van, soon joined a third agent already in pursuit.

Behind the wheel of the van was an illegal alien, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila of Mexico. Unknown to the growing number of Border Patrol agents converging on Fabens, Aldrete-Davila’s van was carrying 800 pounds of marijuana.

Unable to outrun Ramos and the third agent, Aldrete-Davila stopped the van on the levee, jumped out and started running toward the river. When he reached the other side of the levee, he was met by Compean who had anticipated the smuggler’s attempt to get back to Mexico.

“We both yelled out for him to stop, but he wouldn’t stop, and he just kept running,” Ramos told California’s Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Aldrete-Davila crossed a canal.

“At some point during the time where I’m crossing the canal, I hear shots being fired,” Ramos said. “Later, I see Compean on the ground, but I keep running after the smuggler.”

At that point, Ramos said, Aldrete-Davila turned toward him, pointing what looked like a gun.

“I shot,” Ramos said. “But I didn’t think he was hit, because he kept running into the brush and then disappeared into it. Later, we all watched as he jumped into a van waiting for him. He seemed fine. It didn’t look like he had been hit at all.”

The commotion and multiple calls for back up had brought seven other agents – including two supervisors – to the crossing by this time. Compean picked up his shell casings, but Ramos did not. He also did not follow agency procedure and report that he had fired his weapon.

“The supervisors knew that shots were fired,” Ramos told the paper. “Since nobody was injured or hurt, we didn’t file the report. That’s the only thing I would’ve done different.”

Had he done that one thing differently, it’s unlikely it would have mattered to prosecutors.

More than two weeks after the incident, Christopher Sanchez, an investigator with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, received a call from a Border Patrol agent in Wilcox, Ariz. The agent’s mother-in-law had received a call from Aldrete-Davila’s mother in Mexico telling her that her son had been wounded in the buttocks in the shooting.

Sanchez followed up with a call of his own to the smuggler in Mexico.

In a move that still confuses Ramos and Compean, the U.S. government filed charges against them after giving full immunity to Aldrete-Davila and paying for his medical treatment at an El Paso hospital.

At trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof told the court that the agents had violated an unarmed Aldrete-Davila’s civil rights.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is a violation of someone’s Fourth Amendment rights to shoot them in the back while fleeing if you don’t know who they are and/or if you don’t know they have a weapon,” said Kanof.

Kanof dismissed Ramos’ testimony that he had seen something shiny in the smuggler’s hand, saying that the agent couldn’t be sure it was a gun he had seen.

Further, Kanof argued, it was a violation of Border Patrol policy for agents to pursue fleeing suspects.

“Agents are not allowed to pursue. In order to exceed the speed limit, you have to get supervisor approval, and they did not,” she told the Daily Bulletin.

Those shell casings Compean picked up were described to the jury as destroying the crime scene and their failure to file an incident report – punishable by a five-day suspension, according to Border Patrol regulations – an attempted cover up.

The Texas jury came back with a guilty verdict. Conviction for discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence has an automatic 10-year sentence. The other counts have varying punishments.

“How are we supposed to follow the Border Patrol strategy of apprehending terrorists or drug smugglers if we are not supposed to pursue fleeing people?” said Ramos, who noted that he only did on that day what he had done for the previous 10 years. “Everybody who’s breaking the law flees from us. What are we supposed to do? Do they want us to catch them or not?”

He also noted that none of the other agents who had responded to the incident filed reports that shots were fired and, besides, both supervisors at the scene knew they had discharged their weapons.

“You need to tell a supervisor because you can’t assume that a supervisor knows about it,” Kanof countered. “You have to report any discharge of a firearm.”

“This is the greatest miscarriage of justice I have ever seen,” said Andy Ramirez of the nonprofit group Friends of the Border Patrol. “This drug smuggler has fully contributed to the destruction of two brave agents and their families and has sent a very loud message to the other Border Patrol agents: If you confront a smuggler, this is what will happen to you.”

The El Paso Sheriff’s Department increased its patrols around the Ramos home when the family received threats from people they believed were associated with Aldrete-Davila.