Bush commutes jail time for border agents

WASHINGTON - In his final acts of clemency, President Bush granted early prison releases yesterday to two former Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer fueled the debate over illegal immigration.

Bush, responding to heavy pressure from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, commuted the prison terms of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The two guards from El Paso, Texas, were each sentenced to more than 10 years for the 2005 shooting, which they tried to cover up. They will be released within two months.

Opposition to the convictions, sentencing and firings simmered ever since the shooting.

"After four years of fighting this, it's taken a toll on me and my daughter, and really the whole family," said Joe Loya, Ramos' father-in-law, who has received tens of thousands of supportive e-mail messages and spent much of the last two years traveling the country to speak about the case.

His daughter Monica Ramos, after learning her husband would soon be released from a federal prison outside Phoenix, told Fox News Channel that Bush "has given us a chance to be a family again, and I want to thank him for that."

Mexico's deputy secretary for foreign relations, Carlos Rico, condemned the decision and said Mexican officials had lobbied hard against it. "This is a message of impunity," Rico said.

The case became a rallying cause for conservatives concerned about border protection. On talk shows, people sympathetic to the agents argued that they were just doing their jobs, defending the U.S.-Mexico border against criminals.

Bob Baskett, Compean's attorney in Dallas, cited widespread support from the bipartisan Texas congressional delegation. "I think the president did the right thing," he said.

Compean, 32, and Ramos, 39, were convicted of shooting admitted drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from an abandoned vanload of marijuana. He remains in prison in Fort Worth.

The agents contended at their trials that they believed the smuggler was armed and shot him in self-defense. The prosecutor, a U.S. attorney appointed by Bush in 2001, said that there was no evidence linking the smuggler to the van of marijuana and that the border agents had not reported the shooting and had tampered with evidence by picking up spent shell casings.

Compean was sentenced to 12 years in prison, Ramos to 11. Each has served about two years. Under Bush's action, their prison time will expire March 20, but their three-year terms of supervised release and fines will remain intact.

Rep. John Culberson (R., Texas), who called the agents' convictions a "grotesque injustice," said he and other lawmakers initially hoped the agents would be pardoned. He helped gather signatures from 31 of the 34 current members of the Texas congressional delegation, plus two former members, for a letter asking Bush for the commutations.

White House officials said Bush commuted the sentences because he believed them to be excessive and thought the men had already suffered the loss of their jobs, freedom and reputations.

Bush has granted a total of 189 pardons and 11 commutations - fewer than half as many as Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Presidential advisers said no more Bush pardons were forthcoming.