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Thursday, January 15, 2009
Time running out for Bush to pardon Border Patrol agents
With few days remaining in his presidency, lawmakers are urging President Bush to pardon or commute the sentences of two former Border Patrol agents serving time in federal prison.
The agents — Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos — are serving 12 and 11 years, respectively for shooting a Mexican drug runner and trying to cover it up.
Supporters say that the agents were wrongly convicted for protecting the United States against a criminal illegal immigrant.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has taken up the cause in the House, held a press conference this week to urge the prosecutor in the case — U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the Western District of Texas — to support commutation.
Rohrabacher said: “Mr. Sutton, we are asking you to look into your heart as a prosecutor and advise the President to commute the sentences of Ramos and Compean so they will not spend the next ten years in solitary confinement.”
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Thursday also said that the President should commute the sentences.
Cornyn and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California sent a letter to President Bush last year asking for a commutation of the sentence. The letter followed a Senate hearing which examined the case.
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Study: illegal immigrants not likely to go home
A study released this week says that “a substancial return” of illegal immigrants is unlikely despite the nation’s economic crisis.
“Substantial return migration of unauthorized immigrants is unlikely unless there’s a protracted and severe worsening of the U.S. economy,” said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute.
The non-partisan group also found that return migration appears to correlate more closely with economic, political and social developments in the immigrants’ countries of origin than with economic conditions in the United States.
Read the study here.
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Chertoff: military prepared to fight Mexican drug gangs
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that federal SWAT teams and military units are prepared to respond to Mexican drug gangs in the event they cross the border.
The story also quotes another anonymous “department official” who said that the forces “stand ready to manage any surge to the border by Mexicans panicked by the cartels’ violence.”
Read the story here.
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Immigrants running for office in native lands
The Associated Press reported this week about an increasing number of immigrants in the United States running for office in their native countries.
An excerpt:
“Immigration experts say a growing number of migrants, who have toiled in the United States as laborers, janitors and car mechanics, are being recruited to run for office in their homelands. Their working-class immigrant stories resonate in Latin America where many residents have family members in the United States, many of whom send home financial support.”
Read the story here.
