Monday, February 12, 2007

Guard our borders? You bet your life

Even the immigration pimps at The Washington Post couldn't ignore the story about convicted former Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos being beaten up in prison by other inmates — Hispanic speaking and very likely illegal immigrants, just by chance.

The Associated Press story did everything possible to trivialize Ramos's injuries, quoting only the statement of a Bureau of Prisons public relations person that Ramos suffered "minor cuts and bruises." That was good enough for the AP's incurious reporter Alicia A. Caldwell.

WorldNetDaily, however, quoted Ramos's wife, who had gotten a telephone call from him:
"He said he didn't have a chance to turn around and look at any of the guys attacking him at that time. He just felt a blow to the back of his head. The prisoners were kicking him with steel-toe shoes, the work boots they are issued in prison. They kept kicking and kicking. And they kept calling him in Spanish a **** immigration officer, saying 'darle, darle,' which means, 'give it to him.' They were cussing him out in Spanish. He couldn't fight back, he was outnumbered." …

Ramos told his wife that he was badly bruised and bleeding from the ears. He said that immediately after the attack, he was placed back into solitary confinement, where he has been for the last two days.

"He told me that he asked to call me Sunday, after the attack," Monica Ramos continued, "but the prison wouldn't let him call me and they wouldn't let him call his attorney. He said the only reason the prison was letting him call now, on Monday, was because the Congress intervened, otherwise he wouldn't have been permitted any calls at all."

Ramos and his partner, Jose Compean, may or may not have not followed the proper procedure in the non-fatal shooting of a drug dealer at the border, although according to WorldNetDaily the case against them was a stitch-up. The federales — ours, not the Mexicans', although it's increasingly hard to tell the difference — cut an immunity deal with the illegal border crosser and drug dealer for his testimony against Ramos and Compean. They asked for and got outrageously long sentences for the agents. They wouldn't allow them to stay outside the prison system until they had exhausted their appeals. They didn't take the obvious precaution of separating Ramos from inmate thugs who would have it in for him, a courtesy routinely granted to child molesters and serial killers.

Does it seem to you like George W. ("Call me amigo") Bush was sending a message to his Border Patrol agents about how seriously they are to take their jobs? That if they get too enthusiastic about guarding the borders, they should not look to him for their safety? Well, it seems that way to me.

Bush will go down in history as the finest president Mexico ever had. And he'll take us down with him.

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