Free Republic

We are saddened to report that it appears as if a Border Patrol agent may have been intentionally poisoned with a pesticide. We are not going to elaborate because there is an ongoing investigation. The agent has a family to support, and they are facing an extremely tough time ahead. He has been incapacitated by the toxins in his body, and is not expected to fully recover. We hope and pray that he can make a miraculous recovery. Note to agents: Please be careful where you eat when you are on duty. As you know, there are plenty of sick...

The ad begins: “You value freedom, but you know there is a price.” Odds are whoever penned that recruiting plug for the U.S. Border Patrol wasn’t aiming for irony. But irony was achieved, nonetheless–considering that the agency is bleeding agents who won’t pay the price of long hours working in hot, remote locations, for less money than employees of other federal agencies make. Not that the Border Patrol doesn’t have its charms. Enviable federal benefits is one. Job security is another: With a presidential mandate to add nearly 6,000 new agents by the end of 2008–reaching a total of 18,000...

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/border_patrol/bp_videos/

EL PASO, Texas — Two former Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a drug smuggler and trying to cover it up have been denied a request for a new hearing. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans denied the request by Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean on Wednesday. The same court upheld the men's convictions in July. No reason was given for the Wednesday's denial. Ramos and Compean are each serving sentences of more than 10 years for shooting Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks while he was fleeing from an abandoned marijuana load in 2005....

Maribel Navarro remembers a time, not so long ago, when afternoons at La Perla restaurant in the remote border settlement of Sásabe, on the Arizona-Mexico border, meant crowded tables and queues stretching out of the door...Mexican and Central American migrants who descended on Sásabe en route to the US provided enough business not only for Ms Navarro but for the whole community. Some estimates suggest that more than 1,000 migrants...passed through Sásabe every day. This lunchtime, however, Ms Navarro is struggling to find things to do...“It’s dead here,” she says. “Sásabe is turning into a ghost town.” The sharp changes...

Link only, AP.

YUMA, Ariz. -- An illegal immigrant who was struck and severely injured by a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle that also hit and killed his daughter is suing the government. Lawyers for Juan Cruz Torralva accuse Border Patrol agent Gregorio Garcia of driving recklessly on the night of March 5, 2006, when he ran over Cruz and his 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes Cruz Morales, in the desert near Dateland, Ariz. Cruz and his daughter were on the final leg of a three-day trek across the border when they were hit. According to the suit filed last month in U.S. District Court in...

The U.S. Border Patrol's largest union local has asked President Bush to put an end to the scores of Mexican military incursions into the United States that have put Border Patrol agents at risk of being injured or killed. "It is disgraceful that Border Patrol agents are put in harm's way and our government doesn't do everything reasonably within its power to protect us from marauding Mexican soldiers and others," said Edward "Bud" Tuffly II, head of Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) in Tucson. "Without a forceful response to these illegal incursions, an agent will eventually...

I heard Glenn Beck talking about them the other day and I was thinking about their situation... what did these men do wrong?! They are in prison for doing their jobs. This goes beyond tying one hand behind our border patrol agents' backs; this is like lopping their arms off and kicking them on the ground. These men literally did nothing wrong yet they sit rotting in federal prison for more than a decade. The leaders of the country they swore to protect have betrayed them both and have left them to a horrible fate. I can think of no...

Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures. That message is never touted in U.S. Border Patrol recruitment brochures, but the sobering reality of working on the border has created an environment in which about 30 percent of agents leave their jobs in less than 18 months. "This has complications up and down the line," said Richard Stana, director of homeland security issues at the Government Accountability Office. "You're constantly in a recruiting mode ... If this population keeps churning, you're constantly...

IMPERIAL BEACH – Law enforcement officers wanted: must work graveyard shifts alone in remote towns along the Mexican border, put in long hours and perform well in triple-digit temperatures. That message is never touted in U.S. Border Patrol recruitment brochures, but the sobering reality of working on the border has created an environment in which about 30 percent of agents leave their jobs in less than 18 months... The Border Patrol's struggle to keep new hires has become more evident as the agency comes close to meeting President Bush's target of 18,000 agents by the end of the year, up...

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office reports that at least a dozen undocumented immigrants have been detained after wandering near a US Air Force Base in southwestern Arizona Sunday. Sheriff's deputies are working with border patrol agents and DPS officers in an effort to locate five to seven more undocumented immigrants who are believed to be in the area of the Barry M. Goldwater Range about 13 miles south of Gila Bend. Two undocumented immigrants have died, likely from dehydration, according to MCSO. The range, which is active with armed military aircraft, has been shut down as authorities search for other...

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection recruitment event in downtown Rochester Saturday was the target of an immigrant rights demonstration. More than two dozen protesters lined the sidewalk outside the Clarion Hotel on Main Street, where inside, the U.S. Border Patrol was trying to attract applicants to be a part of the federal agency that’s slated to add more than 6,000 employees this year. The demonstrators outside held signs promoting equal rights and denouncing racism, which are ideas they say the Border Patrol doesn't embrace. "We are here to let the recruits know and the public in general know what...

U.S. Border Patrol Agents are Still in Prison! Call the White House and Tell President Bush to Pardon Ramos and Compean! On February 17, 2005, U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were guarding the Mexican border near El Paso, TX when they intercepted a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana. They attempted to prevent a Mexican drug-smuggler from crossing the border and illegally entering the United States. After the U.S. government intervened and granted immunity and a temporary visa to the illegal drug-smuggler in exchange for testimony against Ramos and Compean, the two border guards were convicted...

Speaks for itself.

Border Patrol agants in Yuma arrested three illegal aliens with extensive criminal histories and immigration violations including assault with a deadly weapon, drug offenses, vehicle theft, multiple battery/assault charges, public intoxication, and shoplifting. All had been previously prosecuted for illegal entry and multiple re-entries after deportation.

Mexican army soldiers invaded U.S. territory and held a member of the U.S. Border Patrol at gunpoint. "Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years," a statement from Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council said. The Tucson Sector Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint near Ajo, Ariz. Mexican military personnel crossed over the border and pointed rifles at him. Judicial Watch documented 29 confirmed incidents along the U.S.-Mexican border involving Mexican military and/or law enforcement personnel in 2007. The Border Patrol union said, "A few years ago the Mexican military...

SAN ANTONIO — Despite efforts to add Border Patrol agents to areas where immigrant traffic is high and drug violence is flaring, officers assigned to the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico are bunched up near the California coast. And some critics see politics at play. An Associated Press analysis of Border Patrol staffing shows that the San Diego sector, with the shortest section of border and fences covering half the boundary, has four times the number of agents per mile that West Texas does and three times as many as most of Arizona. That is the case even though the Tucson...

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) - An official with Arizona's Department of Public Safety says at least 9 people are dead after a sport utility vehicle rolled over on a rural highway southwest of Phoenix. Excepting as original is from AP

NEAR FLORENCE -- Nine people were killed and nine more were hurt in a single-vehicle rollover on the highway outside of Florence.

Very rarely do you see conservatives rally around convicted criminals demanding they be set free. That’s part of what makes the case of Border Patrol agents Ingacio Ramos and José Compean so special. That, along with the fact that so many people who should be behind bars are free while the two agents are in prison for essentially doing their jobs. Ramos and Compean made the mistake of shooting a Mexican drug smuggler named Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the butt as he was trying to get away. Good for them, you might say, but U.S. Attorney and Bush-buddy Johnny Sutton...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Mexican troops crossed the border into Arizona and held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint on Sunday, according to a published report. Agents assigned to the Border Patrol at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the border into an isolated area southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who has not been identified. The Mexicans withdrew after other American agents arrived on the scene, The Washington Times reports. It’s not known why the troops crossed the border, but American law enforcement authorities have said that current and former Mexican soldiers have been hired to protect drug...

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint Sunday night by members of the Mexican military who had crossed the border into Arizona, but the soldiers returned to Mexico without incident when backup agents responded to assist. Agents assigned to the Border Patrol station at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the international border in an isolated area about 100 miles southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who was not identified.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection special agent was killed after he got into an argument in the parking lot, police spokesman Brian Davis said. The other man then pulled out a gun and fired at least one shot. The gunman then took off.

What happened to justice in America? It certainly wasn’t served on July 28 when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the unjust convictions of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. As it stands today, these two brave border protectors must now serve out their full 10-plus-year sentences for shooting and wounding a Mexican drug smuggler they encountered while he was carrying a million-dollar payload of narcotics along the Southern border in Texas. What started off as simple procedural mistakes by the agents has turned into an unimaginable travesty of justice unlike anything I’ve ever seen in...

Thirty-one members of Congress on Wednesday asked President Bush for an "immediate review" of the convictions of former Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who were sentenced in 2006 to lengthy prison terms for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect in the buttocks as he fled back to Mexico. "Should you be unwilling to pardon Agents Ramos and Compean, as some of us have advocated, we ask that you then consider commuting their sentences to time served," the Republican lawmakers said in a letter. "Your intervention in this matter will not only serve to correct this injustice, but also help...

WASHINGTON — Under increasing pressure from congressional Republicans to free two imprisoned Border Patrol agents, President Bush is showing no sign of hurrying his decision. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Wednesday sidestepped a question about Texas Sen. John Cornyn's demand that Bush commute Ignacio Ramos' 12-year sentence and Jose Compean's 11-year term. The agents were convicted of charges arising from the shooting of an unarmed drug smuggler near El Paso, and their sentences were increased because they were found guilty of committing a crime with a firearm. "There is a process in which people in our country can ask...

Guest Commentary by Laurie Roth This week I thought I would lose my mind when I heard of the horrifying decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals against Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. So many of us who had followed this case for the last few years were hoping that once all the evidence had finally been heard, unlike with the first trial, that justice would be done. Wrong!! Justice was not done!!! You may recall in the first trial that the illegal alien, drug thug Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, who brought 743 pounds of marijuana over our border was...

The government watchdog group known as Judicial Watch recently filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, for that agency’s failure to turn over certain documents related to the prosecution of Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean… The suit comes after the government refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for documents which detailed the agreement made between the governments of Mexico and the United States, which allowed drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila to return to this country to actually testify against Ramos and Compean. The FOIA request was filed by Judicial Watch on April 17, 2008. The...

SAN DIEGO - The observation posts are vacant, the National Guard helicopters that flew along the U.S.-Mexican border silent, the hammers and welders that beefed up the international boundary fence still. After two years of a historic mission to strengthen the country's southern frontier and boost U.S. homeland security, members of the California National Guard are going home. The border deployment, dubbed "Operation Jump Start," officially ends Tuesday, although a handful of Guard troops will remain in San Diego until the end of August writing final "after-action" reports.

BROOKS COUNTY -- It's just before noon in the tangled woods of La Copa Ranch. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Rick Garcia makes his first discovery of the day. Through the web of mesquite brush and weeds, the footsteps of three immigrants crunch louder on the blanket of dead leaves as they approach the weathered ranch path. Garcia's partner, K-9 agent Chico, just found the immigrants struggling through the woods. Garcia asks the exhausted group in Spanish whether any of them have weapons, then how long they have been traveling on foot. "Two days," one woman replied in Spanish. The group...

HIDALGO -- The pair of U.S. Border Patrol agents guide their horses under the fiery midday sun. One man spots more than a dozen people huddled beneath a grove of trees that sit just several yards before them. The two charge forward. Part of the gaggle breaks apart as the immigrants try to outrun the agents - a desperate run for escape while others remain beneath the trees. As one agent chases the runners while still on horseback, his partner breaks off and confronts the others in the shade. But as he approaches, the supposed coyote - clad in green...

Amid fierce U.S. government protests over the release of a suspect in the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Mexico yesterday pledged close cooperation with U.S. authorities. But Mexican officials said they have yet to receive a request for his extradition or arrest. Jesús Navarro Montes, who is suspected of drug smuggling, is accused by U.S. authorities of driving a sport utility vehicle over agent Luis Aguilar in January near the U.S.-Mexico border west of Yuma. Navarro was released from a Mexicali prison earlier this month after Judge Laura Serrano Alderete, of the Baja California 12th District, cleared him...

A man jailed in Mexicali on suspicion of running down a Border Patrol agent in January, killing him, has been released without charges, it was reported yesterday. The Attorney General's Office in Baja California confirmed to The Associated Press that Jesús Navarro Montes had been released from a Mexicali jail. No explanation for his release was given. Navarro was arrested Jan. 22 by Mexican authorities. He was accused of driving a Hummer carrying drugs on Jan. 19 near Yuma, Ariz. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar was placing spike strips on a road to stop the Hummer and a second vehicle...

It was as frightening as a Halloween trick can be: It happened in broad daylight. It was caught on camera. The government says it really happened. On Oct. 31, 2006, a covert agent of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) pulled to the side of a Canadian highway that runs along the U.S. border. Greg Kutz, GAO's managing director of forensic audits and special investigations, explained what happened in a May 16, 2008, report to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus. The report summarized GAO's efforts (from 2003 to 2007) to covertly test the effectiveness of U.S. border security. The covert agent...

McALLEN, Texas -- The thousands of National Guardsmen sent to reinforce the U.S.-Mexican border two years ago have almost completely withdrawn, despite pleas from border-state governors once skeptical of using soldiers to catch illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. When the Guard was posted along the southern frontier in 2006 to help the strapped Border Patrol, critics warned that sending soldiers would be an insult to Mexico and that innocents could get shot by troops trained for combat, not law enforcement. But none of that happened, and now those worries have given way to fears that a bloody drug-cartel war on...

(CNSNews.com) - Members of Congress are split on whether the National Guard should end its deployment along the U.S.-Mexico border in July, as planned. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted the border would not be secured until 2011. (See earlier story)The Guard built 38.1 miles of new fencing, 18.5 miles of new roads, 94.5 miles of vehicle barriers and repaired 717 miles of road. The final withdrawal for the National Guard working in Operation Jump Start is planned for July 15. The National Guard's Noller said that Operation Jump Start is winding down because of a presidential directive....

The May 24 headline announced "Marchers want legality for undocumented teens." A few dozen local college kids were out to express their outrage that another amnesty for illegal aliens (the last one was in 1986) -- a "DREAM Act" that would have allowed The marchers say they want these anchor babies to be given a "path to legal status." They've already got one: Go back to your U.S. embassy or consulate in Mexico or Guatemala or El Salvador and fill out your immigration forms and wait your turn. What those who prefer the simpering euphemism "undocumented" really want is not...

One windy afternoon last week at the border fence, a construction platform carrying a crew of National Guard personnel moved slowly along the barrier, sparks flying from blowtorches as the guardsmen straightened and retrofitted the steel posts. For most of them, it would be their last task on the border. “I'll go wherever they want me to go,” said Staff Sgt. Dan McBride, 44, the crew's supervisor, a mail carrier from Fresno who plans to go back to his full-time job for a while before his likely deployment to Iraq in February. “But this has been sweet, San Diego.” After...

If President Bush would simply pardon the unjustly imprisoned former Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, we could all rest much easier knowing that in the United States, a foreign drug smuggler's word does not prevail over the word of federal agents in the line of duty. This week, the Kentucky-based group, Christians Reviving America's Values, filed an ethics complaint with the Texas Bar Association to investigate U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, whom the group argues willfully misled a jury to convict the agents. Here is a refresher on the case for those who need it: Messrs. Ramos and...

EL PASO, Texas - A U.S. Border Patrol Agent is under arrest charged with helping run a massive human smuggling ring out of El Paso. Jesus Miguel Huizar, 28, made his first appearance before a federal magistrate Wednesday afternoon. Emeterio Sigala-Favela and Luis Carlos Chacon-Rubio, both of Chihuahua, Mexico, are also charged in this case. The federal indictments were unsealed Tuesday. They paint the picture of a complex, well-organized and highly lucrative operation that may have helped as many as 100 undocumented immigrants cross the border. Huizar allegedly allowed the other men to bring undocumented immigrants through the Border Patrol...

Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America's Values (CRAVE) has filed an ethics complaint with the Texas Bar Association against Prosecutor Johnny Sutton. In this complaint Swarthout charges Sutton's office willfully misled the jury in order to convict Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean for simply doing their jobs. Swarthout has asked the Texas Bar Association to investigate Johnny Sutton for actions strikingly similar to Prosecutor Mike Nifong's mishandling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. The evidence suggests Johnny Sutton is just as guilty as Mike Nifong of unethical prosecutorial behavior. Swarthout said, "This whole case stinks to...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

The Border Patrol has discovered 61 suspected illegal immigrants from Mexico inside a tractor-trailer on Interstate 8 near San Diego. Border Patrol agents discovered them inside the eastbound truck during a vehicle stop Saturday night, about 45 miles east of San Diego. They were hiding behind bales of cardboard. The agency said Monday that it arrested the driver, 29-year-old Jose Pina Flores, who will be charged with immigrant smuggling. The Border Patrol says the Mexican man admitted being in the U.S. illegally. No injuries were reported.

EL PASO, Texas - Josefa Gonzalez Loya has sneaked across the Mexican border at least 128 times in the past eight years. And each time, the Border Patrol has been nice enough to give her a lift home. Gonzalez and a group of other women and children — all Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca — have no interest in staying in the United States. All they want to do is panhandle outside El Paso businesses, using the children as lures.At the end of a productive day, they wait for the Border Patrol to come pick them up...

El Paso, Texas (AP) -- Josefa Gonzalez Loya has sneaked across the Mexican border at least 128 times in the past eight years. And each time, the Border Patrol has been nice enough to give her a lift home. Gonzalez and a group of other women and children — all Indians from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca — have no interest in staying in the United States. All they want to do is panhandle outside El Paso businesses, using the children as lures. At the end of a productive day, they wait for the Border Patrol to come pick...

LORETITO, Mexico — It's the end of the day here. Down one lonely street two young boys kick a ball between them, as an elderly woman slowly makes her way nearby. On most days, this little town about 300 miles northwest of Mexico City feels like the set of a Hollywood movie — its narrow streets and alleyways silent, stark, deserted. From the sidewalk outside his small liquor shop, Edmundo Cruz takes in the vast emptiness, pointing out one house after another left vacant when families headed north — to Seattle. It is said more Loretito people now live in...

FRIDAY HARBOR, San Juan County — The people of the San Juan Islands tend to be independent sorts, espousing a do-it-yourself, leave-me-be ethos as natural and ever-present as the tide. But for many of the 17,000 people of this island county, the normal rhythms of small-town life have hit a dissonant chord lately. A couple of months ago, the U.S. Border Patrol began occasional "spot checks" of every vehicle and passenger arriving in Anacortes off state ferries, the lifeline between these islands and the mainland. For some here, it seems like a good idea or, at worst, a minor inconvenience....

Mychal Massie, the chief of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Project 21 and a columnist for WND, is renewing his call to President Bush to pardon two former U.S. Border Patrol agents who were convicted and jailed for shooting at a fleeing drug smuggler. The call from Massie, whose Project 21 has been a leading voice of the African-American community for nearly two decades, follows a guilty plea from Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, the smuggler in the case involving agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos. Aldrete-Davila pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas, to drug smuggling and is to...