The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to look into the prosecution of U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. The two were convicted last year to 11 and 12 years respectively for assault with serious bodily injury, assault with a deadly weapon, discharging of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, violating civil rights and obstruction of justice.

The incident in question occurred on February 17, 2006 when Compean 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 responded the Compean’s call for backup and shortly thereafter a chase ensued. The driver of the van Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila of Mexico, eventually fled on foot with Ramos and Compean pursuing.

“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.”

Unknown to the officers at the time, Aldrete-Davila’s van was carrying 742 pounds of marijuana.

The outcome of that day was another in a long line of questionable actions by the Justice Department. After learning Aldrete-Davila was shot in the buttocks as he fled, the U.S. Government filed charges against Ramos and Compean, while offering Aldrete-Davila full immunity from prosecution as well as paying any related medical bills in exchange for his testimony.

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

The sentence which came down shortly thereafter of over 10 years each for Ramos and Compean brought pleas from the public as well as Congressman for President Bush to pardon the two border agents. In what can only be called a miscarriage of justice in the aftermath of the commutation of Libby’s sentence, both Ramos and Compean remain in prison.

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Congress, Immigration, Politics