The question that repeats and repeats in my mind:
Why were Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean prosecuted with such ferocity for doing their jobs that they now face up to 20 years in prison?
As Ramos and Compean await their fate, drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila received immunity. As a free man living in Mexico, Aldrete-Davila plans to sue the Border Patrol for $5 million for alleged violations of his civil rights suffered while transporting 743 pounds of marijuana across the border.
Briefly, Ramos and Compean were charged for firing at Aldrete-Davila as he fled back across the border and not reporting the incident.
Those who want to learn more should go to the National Border Patrol Council website. Once on the site, read the excellent columns by Debra Saunders in the San Francisco Chronicle [ The Border Patrol Inquisition, August 24, 2006] and by Sara A. Carter of the Ontario (Calif.) Daily Bulletin,[ PDF] posted there.
For perspective, a Border Patrol officer convicted of smuggling illegals while on duty was sentenced in July to just five years—upped by U.S. District Judge John Houston; prosecutors asked for only three.
To return to my question: "Why?"
No matter which roads you travel to find the answer, they all lead to President George W. Bush.
During his nearly six years in office, Bush has given the Open Borders crazies carte blanche to do whatever they please without fear of repercussion.
Bush has never missed a chance to insult patriots with his words and deeds
Ramos and Compean's conviction is one more slap in the face to Americans who love their country and work to defend it.
In Ramos and Compean's case, they were on the firing line, literally, protecting the United States.
Beginning with the July 2001 State Dinner given in honor of Mexico's president Vicente Fox and his wife Martha Sahagun de Fox White House State Dinner and resplendent with fireworks over the Potomac River, Bush has only babbled nonsensical platitudes about illegal immigration.
No sooner had the last pyrotechnic burst soared though summer sky five years ago than Bush called illegal aliens "citizens." (Steve Sailer's funny/tragic account of Bush's misspeak is here.)
Unbelievably, Bush's immigration policies have gone downhill since.
As the 9/11 anniversary approaches, let's review where Bush and the country stand vis-a-vis immigration.
Most pro-reform activists assumed that 9/11 would usher in a new, stricter immigration era to, if for no other reason, combat terrorism.
But because Bush wants Open Borders, that hasn't happened. " Homeland Security," as Bush likes to call it, isn't an issue for him.
In the unlikely event that your memories need refreshing on the events that led up to and immediately following 9/11, I recommend that over the Labor Day weekend you rent a new DVD titled On Native Soil.
By using surviving family members' testimony to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S., (formed over Bush's repeated vocal protests) the film recounts all the Clinton and Bush administrations' oversights that made 9/11 inevitable.
The video features VDARE.COM friend Bruce DeCell of 9/11 Families For A Secure America. Earlier this year, DeCell received national attention when he used his matricula consular card to enter the Department of Homeland Security in Washington D.C. DeCell listed his address as 123 Fraud Blvd and his birthplace as Tijuana.
As highlighted in the film, two years ago the commission made its final recommendations. Among them were:
Current status of these and other recommendations: ignored.
If Bush had lobbied as hard for the 9/11 security measures as he did for S. 2611, the Kennedy/Bush Amnesty and Immigration Acceleration bill, we might be somewhere.
But he didn't. So we're nowhere.
I asked VDARE.COM contributor Peter Gadiel, who like DeCell lost a loved one on 9/11, if he feels that Bush is responsible for the miscarriage of justice inflicted upon Ramos and Compean.
Gadiel answered:
"By failing to respond to the 9/11 attacks, failing to respond by securing our borders against infiltration by agents of radical Islamic groups hiding in plain sight among illegal aliens, Bush has demonstrated contempt for those killed on September 11. The men and women of the Border Patrol are among those who, if supported by their superiors, will thwart more mass murder committed by terrorist aliens. Bush has proven, by his prosecution and persecution of Ramos and Compean that he will stop at nothing to prevent enforcement of any laws that will stop foreign terrorists from crossing our borders. Clearly, other interests, commercial and political, control Bush's policies. American security is of no importance if it conflicts with Bush's agenda."
In conclusion, Gadiel added:
"When Bush stood on the ruins of the WTC after 9/11 and said 'I hear you,' I believed him. His record in office establishes beyond contradiction that he was lying. Bush has failed completely and utterly to protect the United States from infiltration by foreign terrorists. Were he on the Mexican and Saudi government's payroll he could not have accomplished more to undermine Americans."
I agree totally. Bush is at best venal, foolish and dangerous; at worst, evil.
A few of you may not agree.
But what other label would you affix to Bush—who, through his silence, sanctions immunity for a drug-dealing Mexican national in exchange for that criminal's testimony against two sworn defenders of America?
Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.
