A Clash of Demonstrations - Hollywood Rally for Texas 3

The immigration protest has gone Hollywood — complete with superheroes, villains, and furry cartoon dinosaurs.

Saturday’s march past the stars on the Walk of Fame didn’t start off having anything to do with amnesty or reconquista. Rather, it was supposed to be a cry of support for imprisoned Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos and Edwards County (Texas) Sheriff’s Deputy Gilmer Hernandez (all convicted on federal charges involving incidents in which illegal immigrants were shot and wounded). And it was, with signs of support for the “Texas Three” and tearful appearances from Hernandez’s wife and Ramos’s father.

Concerns grow in jailing of Border Patrol agents

BY BRIDGET JOHNSON, Columnist
Article Last Updated: 02/12/2007 06:54:09 PM PST

Sentenced to more than a decade behind bars in the 2005 shooting and minor wounding of an illegal-immigrant drug smuggler, former Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos was attacked by other inmates early this month just after beginning his sentence at a federal prison in Mississippi.

According to "America's Most Wanted," which had broadcast a segment on the case just before the assault, the inmates yelled "maten a la migra" - or "kill the Border Patrol agent" - as they beat Ramos.

On Saturday, outraged members of the Crispus Attucks Brigade (an African-American anti-illegal-immigration group founded by L.A. homeless activist Ted Hayes), Save Our State and the Minutemen pulled together a rally on Hollywood Boulevard to protest the detention of Ramos and fellow agent Jose Compean. Several hundred people marched and offered emotional and financial support to the agents' families and the family of Gilmer Hernandez, a Texas sheriff's deputy similarly convicted in the shooting and minor wounding of an illegal immigrant.

Counterprotesters rallied by the far-left Act Now to Stop War & Racism (ANSWER) Coalition also showed up to confront the marchers, many wielding signs stating "Stop Border Patrol" or praising the incarceration
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of the agents. Others turned it into a race issue, shouting "You are white, you are a racist" at the highly diverse crowd backing the officers. ANSWER members tried to shout down Hayes and other speakers.

One of the speakers - though he was too choked up to say more than a few words - was Ramos' father.

"Let's see one of you beat my son - one of you, not five!" Ramos said to the counterprotesters. "You're a bunch of cowards."

And as rumblings about the Ramos-Compean case grow louder on Capitol Hill - and the White House continues to be unresponsive - a review of the case reveals troubling details. Like the fact that Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, the drug smuggler who was shot in the butt, was given immunity to testify that the Border Patrol agents violated his civil rights - despite the fact that Aldrete-Davila was driving a van full of marijuana when spotted by the agents.

And amazingly, the federal government had charged the agents with assault with intent to commit murder, though they were acquitted of that and convicted on various lesser charges.

Ramos has said that Aldrete-Davila turned toward him in a foot pursuit and pointed what looked like a gun. "I shot," Ramos told Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reporter Sara Carter before his sentencing. "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."

"The supervisors knew that shots were fired," he added. "Since nobody was injured or hurt, we didn't file the report. That's the only thing I would've done different."

As to the allegations that Ramos shot a fleeing man, National Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner told me that the path of the bullet through Aldrete-Davila was consistent with someone who had turned around.

To characterize the incident as the shooting of an unarmed migrant is disingenuous, too. Since the smuggler fled afterward, we'll never know what Aldrete-Davila was packing. To believe that a man would be transporting 800 pounds of marijuana with a street value of a cool million without a weapon to protect his loot from other smugglers is highly ignorant. To believe the word of a drug smuggler is similarly crazy.

But it sure sounds good if you're trying to vilify those who would secure our borders. The call to counterprotest issued on ANSWER L.A.'s Web site stated that Ramos, Compean and Hernandez were guilty of shooting "unarmed immigrants."

Unfortunately, those who don't spend time at the border can rarely comprehend the level of violence down there and the ruthlessness of drug gangs, something agents face every day. On one of my trips down to the California-Mexico border, I was told that agents discovered a backpack containing two AK-47s in the same remote field where I'd previously been. The Border Patrol is outgunned.

To bump the outrage meter into the red zone, Aldrete-Davila filed a $5 million lawsuit against the federal government, alleging his civil rights were violated. Since the government sought out the drug smuggler and let him testify with immunity, no one will be shocked if it caves on this request.

And coming to the border, inciting agents and taking a shot in a soft spot might soon prove a more profitable business than drug or human smuggling.

Bridget Johnson writes for the Daily News. E-mail her at bridget.johnson@dailynews.com.

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