In fact, a smart mule probably understands that, if he's caught, he'll do significantly less jail time if he's unarmed.
In the same vein, a Crip selling meth on a street-corner in L.A. carries nothing but a cell phone with which he contacts his "mule," (who is usually a juvenile) possesing the drugs. The gun? It's carried by his "muscle" just out of sight. Division of labor, and all that.
Reading the DHS report, the guy was really just a driver, and apparently not a regular (Of course, this is probably a disputed fact -- to those who don't believe the investigators, the report will be dismissed).
He had to sneak over the border, and then he met up with the van to drive it to another location. So he may not have owned a gun, and they may not have given him a gun -- his job was to be an "anonymous" driver, one that wouldn't arouse suspicion, and one who with no record might get off easy if caught (plus he could plead ignorance of the drugs in the back, with no prints on them since he never touched the drugs).
The story makes a lot more sense reading the report.
Another interesting thing. There are many redacted parts of the report, because in the U.S. we have certain privacy rights. It's clear now that WND has been getting unredacted reports, for example the guy's medical treatment. Leaking the man's private medical treatment report was probably a violation of the law, and something most of us would frown upon if the guy wasn't an illegal.
This report is pretty useful.
For example, the pro-pardon folks make a big deal out of the fact that the bullet taken from davilas was in Sanchez's posession overnight and therefore could have been swapped out.
But the report indicates Sanchez had no access to Ramos's gun, which was taken from Ramos by a different agent at a different time. So there was no way for Sanchez to substitute bullets.
And the report notes that there was a preliminary and a final study of the bullet, the preliminary to determine the types of weapons that could fire the bullet, and then the match against bullets from all five of the agents that were known to be on scene at that point.
It is also interesting to note that, at the time, they didn't know it was Compean and Ramos who shot. Davilas didn't know the names of the men, he provided a description -- and the initial interviews with all the agents had them all saying there was no shooting. Later the five all confessed to who did the shooting; there was no way for Sanchez to have known it was Ramos for whom he would have to plant a bullet as evidence, and not Compean or one of the other agents.
As with most conspiracy theories, this one only sounds good when you have only a vague, passing reference to the facts. The report also explains how police verify a criminal's testimony, noting that they separately interviewed the criminal and the other agents, and then studied the scene to determine that the story told by the criminal matched the information given by the other agents.
Union Labor?