A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official just sent me a copy of a story that appeared in an Arizona newspaper recently. The story is about a Border Patrol agent who has been indicted for “harboring an illegal immigrant.”
The DHS official was somewhat suspicious about the case, in that the agent arrested had last year blown the whistle on U.S. government abuse of illegal immigrants.
A recent story in the Tucson Citizen reports the following about the case:
A U.S. Border Patrol officer who lodged complaints about alleged illegal immigrant abuse has been indicted on five charges of transporting and harboring an illegal immigrant.
The indictment charges that Douglas agent Ephraim Cruz, 32, knowingly brought into the country an illegal immigrant, Maria De Socorro Terrazas-Orozco, on Jan 22 (2005).
Last year, Cruz complained in several internal memos obtained by the Tucson Citizen that migrants were going up to 24 hours without food and were unnecessarily crowded into cells.
Given the U.S. government’s record of retaliation against whistleblowers, the concern that this indictment might be an act of reprisal can’t be dismissed out of hand.
On the other hand, over the past few months, there have been several cases of border law enforcers in Arizona being arrested for harboring illegal aliens. In those cases, the government alleges the law enforcers had struck up intimate relationships with the alleged illegal immigrants.
From another story in the Tucson Citizen:
A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been indicted and arrested for allegedly harboring an illegal immigrant with whom he was living in a "spouse-like" relationship. It is the third such alleged incident involving an immigration enforcement officer in Arizona since March.
Twenty-three-year-old Pablo Sergio Berry was arrested yesterday in Naco, where he had been stationed as an agent, for harboring Claudia Veronica Vasquez-Banda, an illegal immigrant, since 2001.
More proof that love knows no borders.
However, the indictment against Cruz doesn’t accuse him of having a “spouse-like” relationship with the illegal immigrant he allegedly smuggled into the country.
In addition, the allegations Cruz made against the U.S. government concerning its treatment of illegal immigrants also are somewhat troubling.
From a story in the Douglas Dispatch:
Ephraim Cruz is the same border agent that filed a memorandum to his supervisors that outlined his concerns about mistreatment of illegal immigrants and health and safety issues on March 21, 2004.
The memo stated that "aliens in our custody are not being fed. On one occasion, a juvenile (was) feeling week and broke out in large red bumps throughout his body, allegedly due to lack of nutritional sustenance. That young boy had been here nearly twenty hours without a meal."
The memo further stated that … a young teenage girl had been granted humanitarian voluntary return after complains of feeling faint.
"That girl had been here three shifts also without a meal," the memo stated.
According to the Dispatch, Cruz could face up to 10 or more years in prison if convicted of all the charges against him.
That’s a serious penalty for a crime that didn’t even involve a “spouse-like” relationship.
And if Cruz did smuggle the alleged illegal immigrant across the border for profit or some other illicit motive, it kind of makes you wonder why he — a law enforcer, who certainly knows the consequences of such an action — did so after accusing the government in "several internal memos" of mistreating illegal immigrants.
After all, that would serve to draw attention to Cruz' own smuggling activity. Seems like only a fool would do such a thing.
Of course, maybe Cruz is not a fool, but rather a victim.
The ACLU does seem to be concerned about that possibility.
More from the Tucson Citizen:
Ray Ybarra of the American Civil Liberties Union office in Douglas called for an investigation to see whether Cruz is being targeted for being a whistle-blower.
"It's definitely something to be concerned about when the only Border Patrol agent to have spoken out about treatment of migrants has an indictment put out against him," Ybarra said.
Ybarra filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year to see if the agency has taken any action to investigate Cruz's complaints, but hasn't heard back yet, he said.
But DHS has taken action – against Cruz.
Maybe it’s justified, but it sure smells fishy from this side of the Rio Grande.
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U.S. Attorney's Office is mum on agent's case
Submitted July 15, 2005 - 4:38 pm by Bill ConroyNews reports indicated that the federal indictment against Cruz makes no mention of a personal relationship between him and the woman.
However, at least three other border law enforcers have been accused in recent months of being involved in “spouse-like” relationships with women they have smuggled across the border. So it is reasonable to assume law enforcers might be targeting such cases in the area, and Cruz simply got pulled into the dragnet.
The fact that Cruz blew the whistle on alleged government abuse of illegal immigrants last year, though, continues to pose the troubling question of whether his indictment on illegal-immigrant smuggling charges this month is a form of retaliation.
In other words, was he targeted for investigation simply because he brought to light embarrassing facts about the government’s treatment of illegal immigrants?
Well, if that is the case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona is not denying it, but they’re not confirming it either. In fact, they’re not really saying much of anything about the Cruz case beyond what has already been made public about the indictment.
In fact, Sandy Raynor, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, declined to even discuss what relationship, if any, Cruz had with the woman he is accused of smuggling across the border.
“I cannot confirm or deny anything beyond what is in the indictment,” Raynor says. “And there is no mention of the relationship between the individuals in the indictment.
“That could be because it’s not relevant to the case. … But I don’t know what the relationship was between the accused and the woman, and even if I knew that information, if it’s not in the indictment, I cannot discuss it.”
But why?
If we put aside the possibility that the government outright framed Cruz — and, he is innocent until proven guilty, after all — we are left with two primary scenarios. He did, in fact, smuggle the woman across the border illegally for 1.) Love; or 2.) Money.
In that context, it seems hard to believe that the relationship between Cruz and the alleged illegal immigrant “is not relevant to the case.”
If they were a married couple, for example, it would make a big difference in the outcome of a trial.
If Cruz did assist the woman in illegally entering the country because he was in love with her, then it would be harder for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to paint him as a true villain, both at trial and in the media.
After all, you would be dealing with an individual whom a year ago exposed alleged government mistreatment of illegal immigrants. As a result, Cruz might rightly fear that his loved one, if exposed as an illegal immigrant, might suffer the same abuse.
That doesn’t make his actions justified in terms of the letter of the law, but in terms of the spirit of the law, would it merit an indictment that could get him 10-plus years in prison?
Assuming Cruz and the woman he allegedly helped smuggle into the country were married, or in love, it might not be in the best interest of the prosecution to let that fact out, as it could weaken their efforts to throw the book at him.
Maybe the strategy is to isolate Cruz by staking the deck against him to the greatest extent possible, so he agrees to a plea bargain before trial, so he'll never have a chance seek the sympathy of a jury. It could just be that Cruz has been thrust into a game of high-stakes chicken with the government.
Clearly, it seems, that is the more logical conclusion. Because if Cruz had smuggled the woman in for a profit (or perverse) motive, he would likely have no sympathy in the eyes of the public, so prosecutors would have every incentive to broadcast his sin of greed to the masses — which would have the added effect of greatly detracting from his credibility as a whistleblower.
At least one law enforcer with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, agreed with that analysis.
“You’re absolutely correct,” the law enforcer says. “Whether information is relevant or not (to an indictment), at times, is mere semantics.
“The common practice is that if you have a subject that can be charged with a felony, don’t charge the subject with a misdemeanor. Why? Because you do not want him to plead guilty to the lesser charge.
“In other words, the government controls your life, sometimes unjustly.”
But that’s just speculation. For whatever reason, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has chosen to keep the issue of Cruz’ relationship to the woman in this case out of public view — for now. In the process, it seems Cruz’ accusations of government abuse against illegal immigrants are out of view, for now, too.