Tag Archives: Napolitano

Staying alive at DHS is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC. So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the Dream directive on deferred action—are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the US Congress in 1996 and their professional careers. Christopher Crane, head of the Council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books—ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the US illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in US prisons for felonies and misdemeanors)—are targets for disciplinary action….

…evidence that the US did in fact sign such an agreement with Mexico, authorizing ATF, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, to implement the gun-walking ‘sting’ that provided Mexican gunman with killing tools used to fire on and murder US agents would corroborate the intent and involvement, at the highest levels, of ATF officials, of the Attorney General (either Holder or his representatives would have had to sign off on the operation), and of the President of the United States—who, as Holder’s supervisor, must be held accountable for the decisions and actions of his subordinates.

It would be difficult, as well, to believe that Eric Holder would have undertaken such a risky endeavor, such a politically sensitive gamble, without a discussion having occurred between Holder and Obama before the implementation of the ATF operation. The stakes, in terms of US-Mexico relations, would have just been too high.

Early this morning (2-25-11), Mexican gunmen armed with short rifles and driving trucks equipped with strobe lights, and in one case, missing license plates, once more attempted to box in a US government-owned vehicle (OGV) driven by US anti-drug agents a short distance from the US border on the Mexican side.

One of the Mexican gunmen in the lead vehicle was also, according to reports, wearing a badge around his neck. . .

The sequence of events that occurred on February 15th and ended in the murder of ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata and in the shooting of Special Agent Victor Avila are as follows–evidence that the attack on two US federal agents was premeditated and planned, not a case of ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ or an incident triggered by the desire of the assailants to hijack a valuable vehicle.