The informant, Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez-Peyro (also known as “Lalo”) is a former Mexican Highway Patrol officer. He is currently embroiled in deportation litigation pending before the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Ironically, that case ( G. Ramirez-Peyro v. Alberto Gonzales) pits the informant against the U.S. Attorney General and the Department of Justice, which itself has been implicated in the cover-up of the House of Death murders.

Jodi Goodwin, Lalo's Harlingen, Texas-based attorney, says the outcome of the appeal could literally be a matter of life and death for Lalo.

“My position [in the case] is that Lalo is afraid to return to Mexico because he would be killed,” she says. “Legally, you can seek protection in the United States if you fear you are being returned to a place where you would be killed.”

Goodwin adds that if Lalo is unsuccessful in his appeal, the case could be brought to the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Narco News previously tracked down legal pleadings filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit by the informant's attorney. The litigation reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which employed the informant to narc on high-level players in the drug-trafficking netherworld, is now seeking to send the informant back into that netherworld, with his identity exposed, to face the very people he ratted out. (Lalo worked as an informant for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of DHS.)

The appeals court pleadings trace the path of the informant's efforts to avoid deportation to Mexico, where his deeds as an informant were carried out against a ruthless narco-trafficking organization.

DHS, which is implicated in the cover-up of their agents' complicity in the House of Death murders, initiated the deportation proceedings against the informant, the appeals court pleadings show. DHS is arguing that the informant faces no danger in Mexico despite the fact that he betrayed powerful members of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes Juárez drug organization.

However, according to the court records, the immigration judge in the informant's case disagreed with DHS' contention and granted him relief from deportation under Article III of the United Nations Convention Against Torture - after concluding that the informant would likely be tortured and murdered by the narco-traffickers he betrayed while working for DHS if he was returned to Mexico. The judge order in the case states, in part, that Lalo should be “removed from the United States to any country other than Mexico.”

DHS was not happy with that outcome and appealed the judge's decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ, too, has been implicated in the House of Death cover-up. An Assistant U.S. Attorney in El Paso, Juanita Fielden, and the U.S. Attorney in San Antonio, Johnny Sutton, have been accused of turning a blind eye to the informant's participation in the House of Death murders because they were more interested in making a drug case against the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes narco-trafficking organization.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, perhaps predictably, overturned the immigration judge's ruling, which forced the informant to take his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in an effort to forestall his deportation.

The case is currently pending before the Eighth Circuit appeals court.