The Propsecution Of Former U.S. Border Patrol Agents

Floor Speech

THE PROSECUTION OF FORMER U.S. BORDER PATROL AGENTS -- (House of Representatives - June 25, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. JONES of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this week to examine mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Included in this hearing will be the opportunity to examine the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing in the case of U.S. Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean.

As the Members of this House well know, in February, 2006, the two agents were convicted in a U.S. District Court in Texas for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler. They were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison respectively, and today is the 160th day since the agents entered Federal prison.

The law that the agents were charged with violating, 18 United States Code, section 924(c)(1)(A), carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years. As enacted by Congress, the law requires a defendant to be indicted and convicted either of ``using'' or ``carrying'' a firearm during and in relation to the commission of a crime of violence or ``possessing'' a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.

However, neither Mr. Ramos nor Mr. Compean were ever charged with specific elements of the crime. Instead, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District Court of Texas, Mr. Johnny Sutton, extracted from the U.S. Criminal Code a sentencing factor, ``discharging'' a firearm, and substituted that sentencing factor for the congressionally defined elements of the offense. Ten years of each of their sentences were based on an indictment and conviction for a Federal crime that does not exist. The law they were charged with violating has never been enacted by the United States Congress but rather was fashioned by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

In this case I can imagine how difficult it would be to obtain an indictment and conviction for ``using,'' ``possessing,'' or ``carrying'' a firearm when the Border Patrol agents were required to carry firearms as part of their job. That difficulty may well explain why this U.S. Attorney's Office unilaterally changed Congress's definition of a crime to a definition that would be easier for the prosecution to prove.

When this issue was brought to my attention and to the attention of my colleagues VIRGIL GOODE and former Texas State Judge TED POE, we were pleased to join forces with the Gun Owners Foundation, U.S. Border Control, U.S. Border Control Foundation, and the Conservative Legal Defense & Education Fund to file a friend of the court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The brief urges reversal of these unjust convictions and 10-year mandatory minimum sentences by spelling out how charges contained in two counts of the indictment against the agents are fatally defective.

I want to thank Chairman John Conyers for scheduling a hearing on this issue, as well as the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism and Homeland Security for its willingness to investigate the injustice committed against these two border agents.

I encourage the chairman and the committee to take a thorough look at the action of the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas and his aggressive prosecution of law enforcement officers like Ramos and Compean.

Mr. Speaker, as I close, I want to let the families of Compean and Ramos know that we are not going to forget these two border agents. They are heroes and should never have been sent to prison.

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