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 Editorials | Issues | March 2007 
Appeals Court Ruling in House of Death Case Puts U.S. Government in a Pickle
 Bill Conroy - Narco News Bulletin (narconews.com)
The House of Death informant’s odyssey through the U.S. Justice system has taken yet another turn.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that the informant’s deportation case should be returned to the Justice Department-controlled Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) for further proceedings.
The ruling is not unexpected, but the consequences for the government could be troublesome, since further proceedings may well result in additional embarrassing information surfacing about the House of Death mass murder and the pretense of the so-called war on drugs.
The informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro, was on the payroll of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when he assisted in carrying out about a dozen murders between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 at the House of Death in Ciudad Juarez. Ramirez Peyro had attained high status in a Juarez-based narco-trafficking gang headed by Heriberto Santillan-Tabares, who himself was a capo in the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Juarez drug organization.
ICE’s complicity in Ramirez-Peyro’s murderous activities was reported to U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton by DEA whistleblower Sandy Gonzalez. However, Sutton chose to retaliate against Gonzalez rather than investigate his charges and take action against the ICE agents and a U.S. prosecutor who oversaw the informant — and who had allowed the murder spree to continue in order to make a drug case.
Sutton is a golden boy of the U.S. Justice Department and previously worked with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as part of George W. Bush’s staff while Bush was governor of Texas. Since that time, Sutton has ridden the coattails of his “mentors” to the powerful position of U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas and also currently serves as chairman of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, which helps set policy for the Justice Department.
After the House of Death murders became public knowledge through media reports, Ramirez-Peyro became a thorn in the side of Sutton and the Justice Department as well as the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. That's because Ramirez Peyro could illuminate the complicity of U.S. government agents in the House of Death mass murder.
So once his role as an informant was deemed more of a liability than an asset, the Department of Homeland Security initiated deportation proceedings against him, with the goal of sending Ramirez Peyro back to Mexico, where he claimed he would be murdered by the narco-traffickers he betrayed.
Ramirez Peyro also, importantly, claimed that Mexican officials, including law enforcement at all levels of the Mexican government, were in league with narco-traffickers and as a result he would not be safe anywhere in Mexico, even if the Mexican government promised him protection.
Ramirez Peyro successfully convinced a U.S. immigration judge that he should be granted protection under Article III of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, or CAT. The U.S. government appealed that decision to the BIA, whose judges are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the U.S. Attorney General. Not surprisingly, the BIA reversed the immigration judge’s ruling and order that Ramirez Peyro be returned to Mexico to face the music.
Ramriez Peyro’s attorney, Jodi Goodwin, appealed the BIA’s decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently issued its ruling. That court ordered that the case be returned to the BIA.
The legal maneuvering in this case is technical in nature, but one important point of the Eighth Circuit’s ruling is that the court made clear that the BIA is not to make findings of fact with respect to Ramirez Peyro’s case. In fact, if the BIA questions the immigration judge’s ruling on factual matters, it must return the case to the immigration judge for further proceedings. This is key, because at that level, Goodwin would likely have the opportunity to introduce even more evidence on her client’s behalf that is embarrassing and damaging to the U.S. government.
From the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling:
Nowhere did the Board [BIA] conclude that there was clear error in the IJ's [immigration judge’s] express finding that Ramirez was likely to be tortured by Mexican officials. Nor did the Board squarely address the evidence on which the IJ based this finding, including the concededly credible testimony of Ramirez about what he witnessed. Instead it cited isolated instances where the Mexican government has recently attempted to redress the major police corruption problem.
The Board also appears to have engaged in its own factfinding in contravention of its regulations by determining that any threat to Ramirez would be restricted to the northern part of Mexico, making it possible for him to relocate elsewhere. The IJ made no specific findings about the geographic reach of the Juarez Cartel or other major drug trafficking networks, although it did note that Ramirez appeared to be in danger even within parts of the United States. If the Board concluded that the IJ erred in not specifically addressing the possibility that police involvement in drug trafficking was a problem confined to the north of Mexico or that the cartel would not be able to reach Ramirez in other parts of the country, it should have remanded the case to the IJ for further factfinding.
... Although we conclude that the Board did not appear to apply the proper standard of review and engaged in its own factfinding, we nevertheless decline Ramirez's invitation to engage in our own analysis of the facts and their implications for his claim.
... The Board should be given the opportunity to discharge its statutory duty to review the IJ's factual findings for clear error and remand to the IJ for further proceedings if appropriate.
The Eighth Circuit’s instructions seem to put the BIA and the Department of Justice in an awkward position.
If the BIA upholds the immigration judge’s original findings, it also upholds that judge’s findings of fact with respect to the complicity of the Mexican government in drug trafficking. Given Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s much publicized recent “crack down” on narco-traffickers in his country, such a finding by the BIA might be seen as a diplomatic slap in the face and leave Calderon’s hard line on narco-trafficking open to international ridicule. Such a finding by the BIA would clearly imply that nothing of real substance could be accomplished in suppressing the narco-trafficking trade absent a wholesale bloodletting within Calederon’s own government. In essence, it would expose the hypocrisy of Calederon’s drug-war policies.
If, on the other hand, the BIA takes issue with the immigration judge’s findings of fact, then it should, per the appeals court's instructions, send Ramirez Peyro’s case back to the lower court for a review of those facts, which allows Goodwin the opportunity to introduce new evidence exposing the hypocrisy of the U.S. government’s war on drugs. That evidence could further illuminate the high-level nature of the House of Death cover-up and bring more public attention to the complicity of U.S. officials in mass murder.
Finally, if the BIA chooses to go the route of ruling that there is some technical legal error with the immigration judge's findings as a pretext for ruling against Ramirez Peyro, then the whole case will once again wind up back on the doorstep of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which might not look favorably on such a choice of tactics. After all, if there was really a solid leg to stand on with that approach, the BIA should have played that card in the first place.
It seems like the U.S. government is caught in a game of pickle, to use a baseball metaphor; only in this game, whichever base the government runs for will lead to an almost certain out for its side — assuming the umpires don't completely throw the game.
Now, couple that pickle with the highly embarrassing details of the pretense of the drug war that are now in the public record of one of the highest courts in the land, and you begin to see why the Department of Justice has gone to such great lengths to silence the informant Ramirez Peyro.
As evidence of that reality, following are excerpts from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Ramirez Peyro case:
Ramirez... filed an application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture, claiming that he feared torture and death at the hands of the Juarez Cartel and Mexican law enforcement acting on the cartel's behalf. Ramirez had an interview with an asylum officer who found that he had a credible fear of persecution from the Mexican government based on his own testimony and a 2004 Department of State report that described the involvement of Mexican police officers in criminal activity, including acts of violence, on behalf of drug cartels.
... Ramirez claimed that he would be tortured and killed if he were removed to Mexico and that he feared retaliation not only from members of the Jaurez Cartel but also from members of the police force who worked on their behalf, alleging that all levels of the Mexican police had illicit connections to drug trafficking. He testified that while working as an ICE informant he witnessed police officers murder individuals at the behest of Santillan and other members of the Juarez Cartel, and that he saw many other bodies of individuals killed in a similar fashion. He also testified that Mexican authorities would often alert the cartel about informants, and that on at least one occasion Mexico's Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) provided information to the cartel about a possible informant, leading to his murder.
... Ramirez further testified that ICE agents warned him that his life was in danger and that two attempts had already been made on his life in connection with his work for ICE. He stated that he and his family, which had been relocated to the United States for their protection and at the federal government's expense, had already been paid some $220,000 by the United States government for his work as an informant but that ICE had also orally agreed to give him resident status in this country. He testified that he was surprised when he was placed into removal proceedings. Ramirez was the only witness to testify at the hearing, but both parties submitted documentary evidence, including country reports from the Department of State confirming the close relationship between Mexican law enforcement and drug cartels, records detailing Ramirez's relationship with ICE, evidence that United States government officials were concerned for his safety, and newspaper accounts of his role as an ICE informant. Some of these news reports suggested that Ramirez's relationship with ICE had become a source of embarrassment for the federal government, since he had been present when cartel members murdered several rival drug traffickers and was alleged to have some role in those killings and or their cover-up.
... In an oral decision on August 11, 2005, the immigration judge (IJ) concluded that relief was "clearly" warranted under CAT, credited Ramirez's testimony, and noted that the documentary evidence indicated that "there are U.S. law enforcement officials who believe that this cartel would be most interested in having the respondent killed." The IJ found that the threat to Ramirez came not just from members of the cartel, but also from parts of the Mexican government:
“Mexican law enforcement, to a great extent, has carried out various crimes on behalf of the narco-traffickers in Mexico. And there really does not seem to be much dispute with the respondent's testimony that the Mexican police were involved in some of the killings he witnessed. Further, there is information that high-ranking national police officials in Mexico turned over information on informants to the cartel.”
The IJ determined that "it is more likely than not that [Ramirez] would be subjected to torture or worse were he returned to Mexico at this time" and granted his application for deferral of removal to Mexico.
Maybe the drug war has finally met its match in Ramirez Peyro, who, through his struggle to remain alive, is peeling back the layers of that pretense to reveal that it is rotten to its core.
The full ruling of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals can be found at this link (PDF).
Stay tuned... |
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