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INS special agent found [shot] dead in car
Arizona Republic ^ | 16 March 2004 - 8:50pm | David J. Cieslak & Daniel Gonzalez

Posted on 03/16/2004 9:06:46 PM PST by Spiff

Edited on 05/07/2004 5:22:20 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

The special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Phoenix was found dead Tuesday in his government car north of Tucson, an apparent suicide victim.

Thomas DeRouchey, 45, interim special agent charged with dismantling violent criminal operations associated with immigrant smuggling, was on his way to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson to participate in a press conference announcing the federal government's latest efforts to stem the flow of illegal immigration.


(Excerpt) Read more at azcentral.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; News/Current Events; US: Arizona
KEYWORDS: arizona; bice; immigrantlist; immigration
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To: saradippity
however these homeland security feds have the coating on the glass for bullet protection and are supposed to keep them up... even in beautiful weather.

this is a really really strange, and very quick suicide ruling.
"make it look like a suicide" comes to mind.

HOW? I cannot figure HOW...
WHY would he off himself?
WHAT, if anything, would he be afraid of... prosecution?
and if one of OURS did a cleaning job, WHY would we have sanctioned the guy, instead of arresting him?

no sense at all.
61 posted on 03/17/2004 1:48:12 AM PST by Robert_Paulson2 (the madridification of our election is now officially underway.)
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To: saradippity
Marana is a strange little town and I can't put my finger on why.

Marana, especially 20 years ago, was a spook town. Lots of CIA types hanging around. A lot of the dirty operations, both official and not so official, in Central America were run from the airport and it drew in some of the nastiest people in the world. Think Mena writ large.

Huge amounts of drugs came in there. One of every five commercial pilots in Arizona was hauling drugs and the center was Marana. I was offered $5000 a night to fly the border but I refused. I would have got rich or got dead, probably dead. You can still walk into various FBOs around Arizona and New Mexico and get the same attitude but Marana was the worst.

62 posted on 03/17/2004 2:30:05 AM PST by MARTIAL MONK
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To: saradippity
Sources: U.S. informant oversaw killings
By Alfredo Corchado/The Dallas Morning News


Officials say customs authorities knew of role in drug smugglers' deaths

Reprinted with permission of the Dallas Morning News. This article originally appeared on Saturday, March 13, 2004.


© The Dallas Morning News, 2004

U.S. customs officials knew last summer that an informant on their payroll supervised the torture and killing of suspected drug smugglers in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and intervened only when two U.S. drug enforcement agents were targeted for assassination, sources told The Dallas Morning News.

The informant continued working for the Juárez drug cartel and its chief, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, while providing details of the cartel's operations to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.

Those officials are familiar with a confidential ICE intelligence memorandum, written in August, that details activities of the informant, most of whose work for the Juárez cartel was aimed at eliminating rival drug traffickers.

Some U.S. officials suggested the informant also knew of, or participated in, other slayings, including the killing of women in Juárez. Since 1993, more than 320 women have been killed, 93 of them believed to be victims of rape-slayings, and scores more are missing, many of them believed dead, according to Amnesty International.

An ICE spokesman in Washington declined to discuss the case involving the informant.

"Your questions concern a pending criminal case. It is our long-standing policy not to comment on pending criminal cases. We will follow that policy in this case. In general, ICE takes any and all allegations of misconduct seriously and resolves them with expediency," said the spokesman, Dean Boyd.

Mexico City-based officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and ICE declined to comment about the informant.


Killing caught on tape

The informant "supervised the murder" of a suspected drug trafficker in August on orders from the Juárez cartel, though he had "minimal participation," according to U.S. law enforcement officials with knowledge of the memorandum.

The informant went so far as to audiotape the interrogation and subsequent killing of the trafficker, according to U.S. law enforcement sources.

ICE officials apparently reined in the informant in January, but by then he had participated in the killings of at least 13 more people in the Juárez area, including one U.S. citizen, said sources familiar with the case.

The bodies of 12 of the 14 victims were unearthed Jan. 23 in the back yard of a modest dwelling used as a safe house in a quiet Juárez neighborhood. Mexican federal officials are looking for at least two more bodies, targeting several other homes around the city for possible excavation.


Reeling in 'big fish'

Customs agents apparently did not share details of the informant's actions with other U.S. agencies at the time. Over the next few months, that same informant helped apprehend or implicate several "big fish," such as 17 corrupt state police officers – including a top commander, Miguel Ángel Loya Gallegos – and a ranking Juárez cartel lieutenant, Heriberto Santillán Tabares, who was arrested on Jan. 15, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

One U.S. official attempted to defend the informant's actions, saying that once all the facts are known, "things won't seem so black and white."

A former U.S. law enforcement official, however, disagreed. "I can understand this happening one time, but you cannot allow it to happen 12, 13, 14 times," the official said. "The last time I checked in the dictionary, there's a big difference between being present at a murder and supervising it."

The Mexico attorney general's office, said to also be familiar with the informant's work and his relationship with the U.S. government, did not respond to written questions.

Top U.S. law enforcement authorities have been briefed about the informant's role, the former U.S. official said, noting that the detailed memo reached "the upper echelons" of intelligence and law enforcement agencies in Washington, D.C.

Some U.S investigators said the informant probably was an important member – perhaps a supervisor – of La Linea, or the Line, a group of drug traffickers and Juárez and Chihuahua state police officers who authorities say protect cartel leaders and smuggle drugs across the border. About 70 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States flows through Juárez-El Paso, drug enforcement officials have said.

Mexican federal authorities are investigating La Linea for possible involvement in the slayings of the Juárez women.

"He [the informant] may definitely be involved in other murders, including the women," said one U.S. official who insisted on anonymity. "But at this time, all we know is those of the 14 men."

"He definitely cannot be any lower than a member of La Linea," added a former top law enforcement official. "The license to kill comes only from Vicente Carrillo Fuentes or another top lieutenant, and that kind of license or privilege is awarded only to members of La Linea."

The case underscores the risks U.S. agents face when they work with shadowy informants who often come with criminal resumes, U.S. law enforcement officials said.


'A price you pay'

"Unfortunately, this kind of stuff happens all the time," said Danny A. Defenbaugh, a security consultant and former agent-in-charge of the FBI office in Dallas. "It's a price you pay when you get too close to the ground."

And this particular episode, some U.S. officials added, could be one of the worst examples of an informant going bad.

"Black Mass pales in comparison to this," said a former U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He was referring to an FBI scandal in Boston from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s in which Irish-American informants protected by the agency killed several members of the Mafia. In 2002, agent-in-charge John Connolly was convicted of racketeering, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The Juárez-informant case comes amid the biggest reorganization of federal departmental agencies in more than 50 years. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Washington created the mammoth Department of Homeland Security, into which were subsumed a number of formerly free-standing departments, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Department, which became ICE.


Lack of communication

More than ever, an effective fight against terrorism requires interagency cooperation, said current and former law enforcement officials, who added that the failure of ICE and the DEA to share notes, or talk to each other, constitutes a security risk.

ICE officials declined to comment. A DEA spokeswoman referred questions to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Embassy officials did not respond to written questions.

Law enforcement officials with knowledge of the informant's complex history gave these details to The News:

The informant had worked for the DEA less than a year before that agency "deactivated" him last summer, when the U.S. Border Patrol caught him trying to smuggle more than 220 pounds of marijuana into the United States.
Instead of landing in jail, the informant continued his affiliation with ICE, for whom he already had been working at least three years – unbeknownst to his DEA handlers.
ICE intelligence agents apparently were equally unaware that the informant was still taking orders from the Juárez cartel.

Agents targeted

The informant's activities in Juárez probably would have continued had he not tried "whacking two undercover U.S. drug agents," a U.S. official said. Those agents had been living in Juárez to better gather intelligence. It is not clear if the informant knew the targets were U.S. drug agents, sources said.

On Jan. 14, about a dozen armed Chihuahua police officers led by Cmdr. Loya knocked on the door of a rental home occupied by an undercover DEA agent and his wife and children. The agent wasn't home, and the family, trained not to open the door, ignored the knocks, authorities said. DEA officials in El Paso, tipped by the family, requested help from Mexican federal agents, who responded immediately.

Thirteen Chihuahua police officers are under house arrest in an undetermined place in connection with the attempted raid. Cmdr. Loya and three other state police officers remain at large. Chihuahua state Attorney General Jesús José "Chito" Solís resigned last week, amid questions about the conduct of his police officers.

On Jan. 15, the informant – apparently to save face – helped set up the capture of Mr. Santillán, 49, the cartel lieutenant. Mr. Santillán was arrested as he tried to cross the border past El Paso sheriff's deputies, who had been lying in wait. Mr. Santillán remains in an El Paso jail, awaiting a March 24 court hearing on federal drug trafficking charges.

"The informant seems to have wanted to deflect the attention from himself, so he helped capture Santillán," said the former U.S. law enforcement official.


Damaging to cartel

For this reason, added another police informant, "no one is more interested in this case than Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. He's desperate to know the name of the informant – if he doesn't know already – so he can whack him. This has been very damaging for the cartel."

Eight days after Mr. Santillán's arrest, Mexican federal agents armed with an affidavit signed by two ICE agents got approval from a Mexican federal judge to dig up a 4-foot-by-6-foot patio of a house on Parsioneros Street in the Acequias neighborhood of Juárez.

Two Austin Police Department officers were deployed to Juárez with trained dogs, which immediately sniffed out 10 spots, one of which yielded two bodies, one on top of the other. The home's occupants, Alejandro García, his wife and two sons, were arrested as they tried to flee to the United States. Authorities said they suspect that Mr. García, a former Chihuahua police officer, had worked for the Juárez cartel for more than a year.

The victims apparently were rivals of Mr. Carrillo Fuentes' drug gang and had been executed with "extreme violence" as long as six months ago, said Mexico Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Several of the victims were strangled or had suffocated.

"They had been tortured and executed to cement the power of the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel, a cell allegedly headed by Santillán," the U.S. attorney general's office in San Antonio said, citing Mexico's deputy attorney general.


Killed in drug dispute

The 12 men buried in the Juárez back yard were killed in a drug dispute, the Mexican attorney general's office has confirmed. The victims told their executioners that they had a large quantity of marijuana stored at another Juárez home, prosecutors said in a statement. Authorities went to the second home Thursday and seized almost two tons of marijuana.

Mr. Santillán, already facing federal drug charges, has been indicted by the U.S. government on charges of "killing, or helping to kill, five of the 12 men," according to the indictment. Eleven others, including Mr. Loya, also were indicted on those charges.

The victims included Luis Padilla Cardona, 29, a 1995 graduate of Socorro High School in Socorro, a small farming community outside El Paso. The others were Fernando Reyes Aguado, Cesar Rubio, Omar Cepeda Saenz and Juan Carlos Pérez Gómez. The indictment said the men "died after Aug. 5th."

http://www.newspapertree.com/newsletter.ssd?section=feature&c=34d1f8d1ee19424b
63 posted on 03/17/2004 2:43:33 AM PST by kcvl
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To: MARTIAL MONK
Of particular concern to the agencies participating in the ICE Storm task force is the increasing use of assault weapons by smugglers. Since June, ICE agents in Phoenix have seized more than 80 illegal weapons, including AK-47s, SKS military assault rifles, and a 50-caliber Desert Eagle automatic handgun.

A critical facet of ICE Storm involves targeting the monetary assets of smuggling organizations. Authorities say "following the money trail" and crippling the organizations’ financial infrastructure is crucial to disabling their operations. A financial analysis by ICE showed that during a six-month period in early 2003 more than $160 million was funneled into Phoenix through money transmitting businesses.

In addition to ICE, there are 12 federal, state, and local agencies participating in ICE Storm. Those entities include the United States Attorney’s Office; U.S. Customs and Border Protection; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Arizona Attorney General’s Office; the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office; the Arizona Department of Public Safety; the Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, and Scottsdale Police Departments; and the Maricopa and Pinal County Sheriff’s Offices.



64 posted on 03/17/2004 2:52:06 AM PST by kcvl
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To: Spiff
Was he a Lakota or was he a Metis?

From the picture I would guess the latter.

65 posted on 03/17/2004 3:06:16 AM PST by Clive
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To: dead
Don't any of these people watch James Bond movies (namely, Live and Let Die)
66 posted on 03/17/2004 5:37:47 AM PST by Maigrey (Tagline Revoked for refusing to make a Dane-Geld payment!)
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To: kcvl
DeRouchey was found dead in his car on Interstate 10 about a mile north of Tangerine Road.

I10 is straight Easy for a second car to pull along side.

http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/addressimage.aspx?t=2&s=15&lon=-111.20864829&lat=32.4243355&alon=-111.20864829&alat=32.4243355&w=1&ref=A%7cW+Tangerine+Rd%2c+Marana%2c+AZ+85653

67 posted on 03/17/2004 5:43:53 AM PST by mtbopfuyn
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To: archy
The drive-by shooting here also happened to be on I-10 --- anyone who knows where I-10 is would find the death of someone who might anger the Mexican cartels suspicious.
68 posted on 03/17/2004 5:45:05 AM PST by FITZ
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To: PLMerite
I'm not even in Arizona and my windows are down while I'm driving now. The weather is perfect ---- too hot with the windows up.
69 posted on 03/17/2004 5:46:23 AM PST by FITZ
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To: Spiff
So why the eagerness to call this a suicide, when even the casual reader doubts the validity of such a conclusion?

Do we need an internal investigation of our own?
70 posted on 03/17/2004 6:03:56 AM PST by LibertyAndJusticeForAll
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To: kcvl
About 70 percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States flows through Juárez-El Paso, drug enforcement officials have said.

For this much drugs to get through in one border checkpoint, there is a lot of participation on both sides of the border --- the cartel has been very effective in getting it's people placed throughout the USA --- once the drugs are over the border, distribution to all major cities is easily accomplished.

71 posted on 03/17/2004 6:04:58 AM PST by FITZ
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To: Spiff
nasty trail bump
72 posted on 03/17/2004 6:23:04 AM PST by ohmage
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To: Spiff
Suicide?

After reading through this thread, it seems pretty unlikely. What is his motive, and why in this way? On the other hand this really smells suspicious.

It sounds like a "hit".

The case underscores the risks U.S. agents face when they work with shadowy informants who often come with criminal resumes, U.S. law enforcement officials said.

As an aside from this story, there is zero sense in the policy which allows federal agents to use the most "shadowy informants" and methods in crime work but the CIA, working only in foreign countries, can only recruit Boy Scouts in their undercover work.

73 posted on 03/17/2004 6:38:00 AM PST by Gritty ("A boring and self-important press is not the same as a serious press-Mark Steyn)
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To: Gritty
was on his way to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson to participate in a press conference

Usually people don't decide to commit suicide while on their way to some conference. It doesn't sound like he was despondant in any way.

74 posted on 03/17/2004 6:50:24 AM PST by FITZ
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To: null and void
I hope some resolution can be brought to the Smith case soon. It has been too long and we have not heard any follow up.
75 posted on 03/17/2004 7:41:57 AM PST by Donna Lee Nardo
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To: Donna Lee Nardo
Me too. I'm especially curious about one of her "clients" who had a permit and pass to work on the sprinkler system at the WTC a few days before 9/11...
76 posted on 03/17/2004 7:56:56 AM PST by null and void (If you stay on the tracks, ignoring the facts ...then you can't blame the wreck on the train.)
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To: spodefly; Marine Inspector; archy; majhenrywest
Just a little Mexican multi-culturalism moving north of the border, I suspect. Diversity is our strength.
77 posted on 03/17/2004 8:58:26 AM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: MARTIAL MONK; wardaddy; archy
Marana AZ bump to 62 etc.
78 posted on 03/17/2004 9:04:49 AM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: kcvl; Squantos; Eaker
Awesome info, thanks!
79 posted on 03/17/2004 9:08:11 AM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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To: LibertyAndJusticeForAll
So why the eagerness to call this a suicide, when even the casual reader doubts the validity of such a conclusion?

An excellent question, which almost answers itself.

80 posted on 03/17/2004 9:11:28 AM PST by Travis McGee (----- www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com -----)
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