…or lack there of in this case.
Early this year former border patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were imprisoned after being wrongfully convicted of violating federal gun laws and covering up the shooting of a Mexican drug smuggler. Ramos and Compean were two of 9 agents present at the scene of the shooting, three of those agents were given immunity in order to testify against them. They were sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively, which for Compean means leaving behind a wife and three young children. Because this was a federal case they will spend their time in Federal prison which is nowhere near their families…Compean won’t see his kids grow up. This case has been highly publicized and rightly so. Members of both political parties have called for Bush to commute the sentence of both former agents but nothing as of late has happened.
One of the most sickening aspects of this story relates to the drug smuggling “victim” who was shot in the buttocks during the altercation but was well enough to escape back to Mexico with 743 pounds of marijuana. He was given immunity and border crossing passes in order to receive free U.S . medical care and to attend the trial. During which time he was arrested for drug smuggling while using one of these passes.
Sadly, even if their sentence is commuted, these two men whose vocation was to protect our borders will not come out of this unscathed. Agent Ramos had to be transferred after spending 6 months in a prison where he was severely beaten by illegal aliens and the families of both men have had to live with threats from those believed to be associated with the drug smuggler. Anyway, their are a lot of sad details left out of this short post so if you would like to read more you should check out freeborderagents.com , ramos-compean.blogspot.com or search under the agents names for related news articles and court transcripts.