We are bordering on madness - Mexico and our Government threaten us!

Since 04-18-06

By Dimitri Vassilaros
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Friday, February 17, 2006

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/s_424631.html

Two nations are threatening American law-enforcement officers who protect this republic's southern border. Mexico is the obvious threat. The other will stun you.

Men dressed as Mexican soldiers have set foot on American soil more than 200 times in the last decade. The Mexican government claims they are impersonators helping drug warlords' shipping into the United States. Whether soldiers or soldiers of fortune, Mexico has done virtually nothing to stop incursions by heavily armed forces in military-style Humvees.

Mexico's inaction surely has helped embolden drug warlords salivating to crack the U.S. market. Hudspeth County, Texas, is just east of El Paso along the Mexican border. The sheriff's department has heard that drug dealers have put bounties as high as $10,000 on the deputies' heads -- and threatened their wives and children. That would explain the armed guards at the schools their children attend.

What is inexplicable is that the other country targeting our law enforcement border agents is the United States.

Border Patrol agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, an illegal alien and admitted drug smuggler, in the buttocks in February 2005, according to the El Paso Times. Mr. Davila claims he was not armed. The agents say he was. They did not report the shooting but did report that the van Davila was driving to an El Paso stash house had 700 pounds of marijuana.

The Department of Homeland Security should have sent medals to each agent.

Instead, it sent an investigator from its Office of Inspector General. He concluded that since Davila was escaping back to Mexico, the agents should not have fired. And since they picked up their shell casings, that supposedly made it a cover-up.

A federal grand jury in April charged the agents with assault with intent to commit murder, assault with serious bodily injury, and assault with a deadly weapon -- potentially 40 years in federal prison.

It gets worse.

Mr. Davila was offered immunity on the drug charge in exchange for his cooperation to help convict the Border Patrol agents. And the investigator arranged for Davila -- a Mexican national in the drug trade who sneaked into America illegally -- to be treated alongside American military personnel and their family members at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, so his urethra could be rebuilt.

It gets worse still.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone recently granted a request by the U.S. attorney prosecuting the agents to exclude any mention of violence along the Mexican border, and in particular, the violence and death threats from the drug dealers targeting Hudspeth County.

And so mum's the word about the convoy of SUVs that had been hauling about 2,000 pounds of marijuana before it broke down in Hudspeth near a Mexican border lined with military Humvees to protect their fellow smugglers.

Surely Homeland Security will recommend several outstanding plaintiff attorneys for Davila so he could sue the federal government -- and the agents individually -- for his pain, suffering and whatnot.

And after Davila pockets whatever amount a civil court jury might award to supposedly make him whole, the only thing left for Homeland Security would be to organize his "welcome home" parade.

Perhaps Mr. Davila could recommend a good mariachi band.

Dimitri Vassilaros can be reached at dvassilaros@tribweb.com or 412-380-5637.