Tancredo

Tancredo has recently been demanding that President Bush should give a full pardon to the two US Border Agents who were sentenced to approximately 11 years in federal prison. Their offense seems to be that a Mexican drug smuggler that brought 743 pounds of marijuana across the US border was wounded. There must be more to this story for the Judge to give 11+ year sentences to federal border patrol officers. The illegal drug smuggler cut a deal to testify against the agents. In exchange for his testimony he was provided with free health care, granted immunity and given border crossing cards.

It appears that the agents did not handle the drug smuggler appropriately and that there should be some consequences for their actions. It seems that these "Border Two-Good Guys" spent their careers protecting the US border keeping drugs from crossing, and now Bush thanks them by sending them to federal prison to sit and rot with the coyotes and drug dealers they have spent their lives fighting. Tancredo concludes that "it is downright shameful that Bush is allowing" this to happen.

Tancredo is outraged at Bush who "commuted the sentence of yet another drug dealer, but not the agents who were on our front lines of defense against terrorists and coyotes" He stated that he felt that the agents would have had a better chance getting Bush's attention if they had helped smuggle the pot in. Bush recently also commuted the prison term for another convicted crack-cocaine dealer and pardoned 15 other people including 5 felony drug dealers, yet he has refused to commute or pardon the sentences of the 2 US Border agents. Tancredo calls this "Bush March Madness".

On the other hand, if these border patrol agents ripped out the drug dealers’ fingernails, used thumb screws, poured acid in their body, and poked out one of their eyes, there might be a good case for the 11 year sentences. I think it is easy for Tancredo to portray this action as the Border Patrol Officers against the Drug Dealer. However, I believe there is much more to the story since so much is obviously omitted. The press release by Tancredo is certainly incomplete and very misleading.

http://tancredo.house.gov/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=1347