Congressman Reyes’ still has chance to redeem himself in Juarez kidnapping case

Congressman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, found himself in hot water recently after his office prompted a federal law enforcement agency, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to assist in the rescue of his kidnapped relative — a Mexican citizen abducted in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

(See Narco News' exclusive coverage and the leaked ICE memo outlining the incident here.)

His congressional office's intervention in the matter has prompted critics to charge that Reyes used his position as an influential politician — he chairs the House Intelligence Committee - to take care of his family while he has failed to make similar efforts on the behalf of other kidnapped victims in his El Paso congressional district.

The kidnappers released Reyes's relative (after ICE intervened with the cooperation of Mexican authorities) on June 22, but only after a ransom was paid, according to the ICE memo.

Reyes, for his part, denies in a media statement that he exhibited any favoritism in the kidnapping case, claiming, in essence, that he would make the same efforts on behalf of anyone — even another foreign national.

Here's what Reyes' spokesman told the press:

Whenever the Office of Congressman Silvestre Reyes is notified of a potential criminal matter, the incident is immediately reported to law enforcement, particularly when an individual may be in imminent danger. This kidnapping was reported to Congressman Reyes's district office by the victim's family [in this case, Reyes' sister-in-law made the call], who are citizens of the United States and constituents of the 16th District of Texas. The Congressman's staff immediately notified law enforcement authorities. We notify law enforcement in these circumstances without regard to the victim's identity, country of citizenship, or legal status.

ICE, for its part, justifies its actions in the Reyes kidnapping case, by asserting that it regularly cooperates with Mexican law enforcement when asked for assistance.

Here's what an ICE spokesman told the Washington Times:

"For ICE, this type of international law enforcement cooperation is not unusual," ICE spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery said. "In any case where ICE is provided credible and specific information related to ongoing serious criminal conduct, we would seek to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency and offer assistance upon request."

Slick Talk

Reyes and ICE, through slick coordination of the English language, seem to have all the bases covered, then. In essence, they were just looking out for the little guys of the world as selfless public servants.

But it seems this public altruism is very situational indeed. To demonstrate this reality, we need only look at ICE's actions in another case involving the kidnapping — and eventual torture and murder — of 12 people, including one U.S. legal resident, in the House of Death case.

In that case, ICE went to great lengths to keep information from the Mexican government, to avoid any cooperation, and the good Congressman also was missing in action, and to this day, even though the events played out in his Congressional district and across the border in Juarez, he has continued his silence with respect to the House of Death kidnappings and murders.

The House of Death case involved an informant, employed by the ICE office in El Paso, who assisted and even participated in the kidnappings and murders of a dozen people, who were later found buried in the backyard of a House in Juarez. [A photo of the House of Death, at 3633 Parsioneros in Juarez, is shown below.]

Among the House of Death victims was an El Paso area resident, named Luis Padilla. In addition, another murder was carried out in El Paso itself (of a young man named Abraham Guzman) who was shot dead by a Juarez narco-assassin in a failed attempt to kill the ICE informant. On top of these atrocities, a DEA agent and his family were nearly kidnapped and murdered as a result of the ICE informant's activities in Juarez.

To this day, some of the perpetrators of these kidnappings and murders remain at large due, in large part, to ICE's refusal to cooperate with DEA and Mexican law enforcement authorities. And to this day, Congressman Reyes has not raised a finger to address this injustice, which played out, in part, in his Congressional district and involved some of his "constituents" — including the families of some of the victims.

Currently, the U.S. government, through proceedings initiated by the Department of Homeland Security (ICE's parent agency), is seeking to deport the informant, who claims he will certainly be kidnapped and murdered if returned to Mexico by the very people he betrayed. The informant's case has been tied up in the U.S. Immigration Court appeal process for some three years now.

Following are excerpts from various official records related to the House of Death case, including the immigration court pleadings of the ICE informant and an internal DEA document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that lay out clearly ICE's lack of cooperation with Mexican authorities.

The Evidence

The House of Death informant Guillermo Ramirez Peyro on Aug. 11, 2005, provided testimony, under oath, as part of his deportation removal proceedings before a U.S. Immigration court in Bloomington, Minn.

The House of Death case, for those who might be new to Narco News' coverage of this bloody mystery, involves the kidnapping, torture and murder, between August 2003 and mid-January 2004, of up to a dozen people who were buried in the backyard of a house in Juarez, Mexico. The crimes were carried out by Mexican cops (including a Mexican state police commander named Miguel Loya) led by narco-trafficker Heribrto Santillan Tabares, a top lieutenant of the Vicente Carrillo Fuentes crime organization. As previously mentioned, present for many of those murders, and participating in carrying them out by any reasonable standard of moral complicity, was the ICE informant, Ramirez Peyro, who was under the watch of U.S. federal agents and prosecutors who worked in Congressman Reyes' congressional district. [The image below is of an internal DEA document featuring mug shots of Santillan (top) and Loya.]

From Ramirez Peyro's immigration court testimony:

During the four years that I work with ICE, which I operated in Mexico as in the United States [in El Paso], never, we never did anything with the Mexican government because we didn't trust them then. Not me, neither ICE.

From U.S. Immigration court judge's ruling in the Ramirez Peyro case, a ruling issued in 2005 and now on appeal by the U.S. government:

The evidence is clear as far as this Court is concerned that Mexican law enforcement, to a great extent, has carried out various crimes on behalf of narco-traffickers in Mexico. And there really does not seem to be much dispute with the respondent's [Ramirez Peyro's] testimony that Mexican police were involved in some of the killings he witnessed. Further, there is information that high-ranking national police officials [such as those who assisted in the Reyes kidnapping case] in Mexico turned over information to the cartel.

... In the present case, we are not dealing with a group attempting to overthrow the Mexican government. Rather, we are talking about an organization that has some of its criminal acts carried out by members of the government, specifically law enforcement officers. This is not a group that the government is unable to control. Rather, what it is, it is a group that uses various government officials to carry out its acts of torture. The Court believes that the evidence in this case indicates that it is more likely than not that this respondent would be subject to torture or worse were he to be returned to Mexico at this time. The danger to him, to a great extent, would come from law enforcement officials. The Court believes that the evidence is clear that Torture Convention relief [for the informant] is warranted in this case.

Now, that is quite an eye opener, considering that with the prodding of Reyes, ICE cooperated with this same corrupt Mexican government — surely at least some of the Mexican law enforcers working with ICE in the kidnapping case still have close links to the Juarez drug organization — to help rescue the Congressman's relative, who was likely kidnapped by elements associated with Juarez' narco-trafficking underworld.

So that tells us that ICE and Reyes were willing to cooperate with these folks to spare the life of the Congressman's relative, but when it came to cooperating with the same Mexican government to bring to justice the House of Death killers (and maybe even prevent further kidnappings and murders) ICE refused to play ball.

Here's what DEA whistleblower Sandalio Gonzalez had to say about ICE's actions in the House of Death case in a letter he wrote to his ICE counterpart in El Paso in February 2004:

On/about August 5, 2003, while working for your agency, the ICE confidential source identified as SA-913-EP (CS) [Ramirez Peyro] participated in a murder in Ciudad Juarez. Shortly thereafter, the actions of the CS were misrepresented to Mexican authorities that were told via official ICE correspondence that the CS had merely "witnessed" a murder and would soon be available to provide testimony to the PGR [Mexican prosecutors]. The CS was in fact a participant in the torture/murder of Fernando LNU, as reflected in his debriefing report dated August 25, 2003, which clearly states that the CS supervised the murder. (When considering this situation, it is not surprising to me that people in your agency [ICE] and the USAO [U.S. Attorney's Office in El Paso and San Antonio] would be concerned about DEA agents sharing "too much information" with their Mexican counterparts.) While DEA personnel have done everything possible to assist Mexican officials without compromising ICE information, ICE personnel have thrown obstacles in our way and concealed vital information that could have saved lives.

... To make matters worse, you would not allow the CS to call Comandante Loya [a Mexican state cop who oversaw the House of Death for the Juarez drug organization] so that Mexican federal authorities could arrest him for his participation in the murders. You and the prosecutor until last week refused our repeated requests for direct access to the CS so that we could at least attempt to resolve the threat. In fact, the prosecutor stated that she ordered ICE personnel to refuse DEA access to tapes of the CS while expressing concern regarding our (DEA) sharing of information with Mexican federal authorities. ... [As a consequence of ICE's stonewalling, Loya and several of his associates managed to elude arrest and remain at large to this day.]

Chance for Redemption

In the wake of that first murder at the House of Death, an additional 12 people, including Padilla and Guzman, would later meet their maker at the hands of narco-assassins assisted or spurred on by the actions of the ICE informant. So it is clear, in this case, ICE's refusal to cooperate with DEA and Mexican authorities, motivated by a desire to protect their informant and to conceal their complicity in his murderous activities, led to further death — if former DEA El Paso commander Gonzalez is to be believed.

In any event, ICE can't have it both ways. They can't credibly claim, as they told the mainstream media, that "in any case where ICE is provided credible and specific information related to ongoing serious criminal conduct, we would seek to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency and offer assistance upon request," when the House of Death case proves just the opposite.

And Congressman Reyes can't claim with credibility that he acts solely in the interest of his constituents when made aware of crimes "without regard to the victim's identity, country of citizenship, or legal status." The House of Death murders and subsequent ICE cover-up were widely reported in the media and were the subject of a well-publicized civil lawsuit filed in El Paso against ICE personnel by the families of the victims of the House of Death murders. So surely the Congressman was "aware" of the crimes, but to date he has made no effort to bring the powers of Congressional oversight to bear on the case in an effort to assure justice for the victims "without regard to ... identity, country of citizenship, or legal status."

But then, none of the House of Death victims were related to the Congressman, nor did they contact his office in advance of their murders. And I guess, in the case of the House of Death, notifying ICE of these crimes wouldn't do much good.

As a result, in a technical sense, the Congressman can hide behind his carefully chosen words to claim that he has no responsibility as a representative of the people to take any action in the House of Death case. In his mind, he can sleep well at night, knowing he has done his duty for God, country and family — or at least for family.

But maybe Reyes still has an opportunity ahead to redeem himself on the other two fronts. Should the U.S. government win at the appeals court level and be granted legal sanction to deport the House of Death informant to Mexico, it is all but a certainty that the informant will be kidnapped by the narco-traffickers (and corrupt Mexican law enforcers) he betrayed — so that he can be properly tortured and murdered.

Once that kidnapping occurs, if someone in his district gives the good Congressman a call to report this kidnapping, Reyes would then have the opportunity to intervene and bring ICE onboard to work with the Mexican government to rescue Ramirez Peyro — and, as was done in the case of Reyes' relative, return him to the United States once again for his safety.

That sure would be a storybook ending to this tragic, bloody affair, and it also would certainly be an opportunity for the Congressman to prove to his constituents that he is a man of his word and a true representative of the people's interests.

Stay tuned ...