Tough Times for the Border Patrol

HS - Jason Hartman Income Property Investing (2)Join Jason Hartman as he interviews Andy Ramirez, founder and president of the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, regarding the legal struggles that border patrol law enforcement officers face with illegal immigration and drug smugglers. As insane as it sounds, border patrol has been told it’s not their job to catch illegal immigrants. Andy relates how the policies coming down from the Presidential administrations are not in support of stopping illegal border crossings, how the War on Drugs is nothing more than words, and how the chain of command, from the administration to Homeland Security to border patrol, is stacked in opposition to the real purpose of border patrol law enforcement. Andy shares numerous examples of actual situations and court cases in which law enforcement officials have been unjustly hit with investigations on trumped up charges, convicted and sent to prison for doing their jobs. When charges can’t be filed, officers may be fired or moved to other departments. For more details, listen at www.HolisticSurvival.com. The system is set up to turn the good guys into bad guys and the bad guys into good guys. Under the current system, it is no wonder drugs flow so freely into the United States. Andy also talked about security compromises, inaccurate information from DHS, and border corruption, including being asked to testify the truth in the House and Senate because the Chief of Border Control wouldn’t tell the truth. Andy discusses with Jason ways to fix these problems, starting with infrastructure changes.

Andrew “Andy” Ramirez is the founder and president of the 501c3 non-profit Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, which he founded in 2008 as a follow-up to his original non-profit law enforcement officers advocacy organization Friends of the Border Patrol. FOBP was initially created to support the Border Patrol and their agents, while improving the quality of life for border residents. As FOBP’s role expanded over the years to include all law enforcement officers, LEOAC is the next evolution in law enforcement advocacy. Andy continues to focus on improving national security at and between the ports of entry as well as along our coastlines, including Puerto Rico. His is a recognized expert on Customs and Border Protection. Andy is a trusted conduit of information between Congressional leaders and those on the front lines. Andy’s work has led to a number of Congressional bills that address border security policies to help America’s law enforcement officers. These bills enhance enforcement of laws and help remove obstructionist policies and red tape. Andy has uncovered numerous issues, becoming known as the “Defender of Border Patrol Agents”, which now includes all law enforcement officers. He has defended numerous officers that were unjustly prosecuted, terminated, and persecuted for doing their jobs, especially whistleblowers. Some of the issues that were discovered included suppression of evidence, abuse of power, suborning of perjury, ignoring Supreme Court rulings, illegal criminal alien violaters who broke laws and were protected by DOJ/DHS during prosecutions of agents/officers.

Andy joined the Liberty News Network as their National Correspondent in October 2010. He has given many appearances on TV and radio over the years. He also authored a comprehensive report titled “Unjustifiable and Impeachable, The FOBP Report on DHS, DOJ, and the Courts.” Andy was instrumental in the prison release of former Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean, and he has been extensively involved in the Jesus Enrique Diaz case. Andy has been featured frequently on CNN’s Lou Dobbs, FNC’s Fox and Friends, Neil Cavuto, and Hannity & Colmes. He has also been a guest on such programs as Michael Reagan, G. Gordon Liddy, Laura Ingraham, as well as many local TV networks and Talk Radio shows across the country. More about Andy Ramirez and the issues he is fighting to address and resolve on America’s border security and laws in favor of law enforcement officials and American citizens can be found on his website at http://www.advocatescouncil.us/.

Narrator: Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper. The Holistic Survival Show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you’ll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman: Welcome to The Holistic Survival Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today and we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on The Holistic Survival Show. And, by the way, be sure to visit our website at HolisticSurvival.com. You can subscribe to our blog which is totally free, has loads of great information and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site. So make sure you take advantage of that at HolisticSurvival.com. We’ll be right back.

Announcer: What’s great about the shows you’ll find on JasonHartman.com is that if you want to learn about some cool, new investor software, there’s a show for that. If you want to learn why Rome fell, Hitler rose, and Enron failed, there’s a show for that. If you want to know about property evaluation technology on the iPhone, there’s a show for that. And if you’d like to know how to make millions with mobile homes, there’s even a show for that. Yep, there’s a show for just about anything, only from JasonHartman.com or type in “Jason Hartman” from the iTunes store.

Start of Interview with Andy Ramirez

Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to welcome Andy Ramirez to the show. He heads up a group called the law enforcement officers advocates council and he is an expert in border security, reforming and plugging holes in homeland security issues and defending and helping officers who are trying to do their job who are potentially unjustly prosecuted or disciplined. And I hope I described that right, Andy, but feel free to add to that and welcome to the show. How are you?

Andy Ramirez: Well, thank you for having me on. I’m most appreciative. And, yes, that was a perfect conveyance of what we do and what I’ve done. It’s become, in essence, something out of nowhere I could never have imagined, either as a youth growing up or as a young adult. I mean, this is something that I started doing in 2004 and, as it grew, by 2008 it’s like I had come to a realization or an epiphany this isn’t just about border patrol. This isn’t just about some smaller pixels that many were looking at. I got the big picture. I kept my eye on the smaller pixel, but I also noted that in the bigger scheme of things, this is a massive thing that has taken place that’s resulted in law enforcement being handcuffed, to use the expression.

Jason Hartman: Yeah. And law enforcement officers, they want to do their job, they want to do their thing. But a lot of times nowadays, and I’m sure this has happened throughout history, but it seems now more than ever they’re really getting picked on and unfairly so in many cases. I think maybe the most egregious and most well-known case recently would be Ramos and Compean, the border guards, right?

Andy Ramirez: Yes. With that case – and this was 2005, February, 2005, these are the two agents from El Paso who went out and actually they were just southwest of El Paso, a little area called Fabens, Texas on the US/Mexico border and they went out there, they were doing their job and there was a drug smuggler who came across, they spotted the van and at that point they tried to set up, in essence, a trap out there for him. A number of agents who had been deployed out there were monitoring this vehicle and at the point when it was closing up so to speak, then he tried to make a run for it and that of course set off the wild chase with things that took place, a scuffle between Jose Compean and eventually the side arms being discharged by Ignacio Ramos and not Compean that led to ultimately them being prosecuted and facing upwards of 10 years in prison.

What they tried to do was literally play the civil rights card, but they couldn’t. So they used a mandatory minimum game with saying that they were shooting a fleeing suspect. But it was believed by many, including myself, that this doper turned around and pointed something towards them. Of course, the thing that made that course so difficult is we only had those two who made the claims, their testimony didn’t match. What was alleged about them was nothing compared to what the government did and the amount of misconduct. I’ll give you a couple of examples. The vehicle of Aldadeta Dovula, his vehicle wasn’t even dusted for fingerprints until nearly 1 month later. So the way it was ceased, drugs were ceased, they didn’t even dust it for over 28-29 days. Then they decided they were gonna dust it.

Jason Hartman: For what reason? Were they just trying to hide evidence? I mean why is it that there are these powers within our country that are on the side of the bad guys? I mean, this is just craziness.

Andy Ramirez: I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s that case that either led me to take a look at other cases because I kept hearing western district of Texas and the prosecution, and I saw that they had prosecuted the FBI special agent in charge, Hardrick Crawford on trumped up charges, claiming an association that he had, even that their own congressman has out there, but he gets prosecuted because he’s meddling in the Mexican affairs as complained by the Mexican government and reported by the El Paso Times. They prosecuted Gilmer Hernandez. He is a deputy sheriff from Rocksprings or Edwards County, Texas. This is just northeast of Del Rio, Texas. They prosecuted him to send the message to local law enforcement not to go after illegal aliens, not to go after drug smugglers, not to go after human traffickers. And they prosecuted many others, Gary Brugman, Noe Aleman. I mean, they were going after guys to send messages. Now, if we look back, most of these cases that I’ve at least been part of – I’ve been a part of at least 10 to 12 – but I can tell you there was so much that was questionable about the government’s role and of course behind them. In one case, the sole northern border case, this was a customs officer who was prosecuted at the request of the Chinese government in Beijing. The foreign minister was contacted by a visa overstayer who was apprehended at the Niagra Falls point of entry and she called her daddy who was a general in China who then called the foreign minister who then called secretary Colin Powell at State and Secretary Tom Ridge at DHS, at Homeland Security. All of a sudden, they’re the victims and Rhodes gets ordered back to the port and he is arrested and then prosecuted within 4 hours. All this is documented. I started looking at the bigger picture at that point, realizing wait, what is this? And as I testified in 2007 before the House Homeland Security Committee, our government is more concerned with trade and commerce than they are with national security and as a result they compromised that. And that led me to take a look at, okay, I’ve seen all these parts of the spider web and it all directed to the center and the administration, which hasn’t changed under President Obama since he took office.

Jason Hartman: So, when you say the administration, it just means sort of whoever’s in The White House at the time, right?

Andy Ramirez: Yes, because this has gone on for multiple generations. The first of these questionable prosecutions was in the 1990s and it took them several years and several attempts, Stephanie Moore, a canine officer from Maryland, Prince George’s County, Maryland, she was prosecuted ultimately by the Clinton administration under attorney general Reno, well they didn’t get her until 10 years ago. She had served 10 years, similarly to the Diaz case in the sense that illegal aliens – they were breaking into a jewelry store after hours – they used depravation of rights under the color of law. It took two trials and they didn’t play the civil rights game the first one, they played it the second one and they brought this trial back. It was 11 to 1 in her favor. Because of the 1, they brought it back and they used the civil rights charge. She did 10 years – she gets out sometime very soon. A dog bite – can you imagine a dog bite? So you have multiple administrations engaged in this.

Jason Hartman: Not multiple generations, you said generations, you meant multiple presidential administrations. So I just wanted to clarify that. So go ahead, multiple what?

Andy Ramirez: So you have these administrations. You have the Clinton Administration, you have the Bush Administration, you now have the Obama Administration, and all of these officers, I can understand the officer that they prosecuted for importing dope or for turning the rack or for doing things of that nature, but in this instance we’re talking innocent officers who are apprehending suspects. And that’s where we have the problem.

Jason Hartman: Yeah. And of course there are bad cops out there, there are corrupt officials – it’s a cliché almost.

Andy Ramirez: I turn those cases down all the time.

Jason Hartman: Right, right. People come to you and they want you to take those. But most of them are good people that want to do the right thing, yet they’re being punished for doing the right thing. As good old Deep Throat from Watergate said, “Follow the money.” And I’d say it’s not just a matter of follow the money but follow the power, too, because those two are so closely intertwined. Who is benefitting monetarily or in terms of their power and influence and prestige by doing this, by prosecuting or disciplining officers that are doing their jobs. They’re doing the right thing. They’re catching the bad guys.

Andy Ramirez: I’m glad you brought that up, too, because that’s a question that I’m hardly asked. And it’s a shame. I think it’s mostly due to time and appearances of various programs, especially television. There’s so little time to get to that question. And it’s not a simple response. Yes, this is mostly about power. Absolutely, this is about money, but it’s about something as well. If we look at these Mexican government instigated prosecutions and we look in the Northern Border case as well which is instigated by Beijing, what’s clear in this is it’s surely about trade and commerce. And so they want to basically use these scalps that they’re getting so that they can say we’ll see. America has the problem. They have to prosecute their officers for abusing our people, but we’re not talking the abuse of civilians. We’re talking apprehension and following the use of force code that they are trained and that’s such a key thing to think about. In these instances, these officers and agents are heavily trained. From day 1 at the academy when you go into the border patrol, it’s training, training, training. You do this, you don’t do that. It’s situations. Even after they graduate the academy, it’s always situations and training and going over that to ensure that the agents don’t make success.

If we look at the previous 20-30 years, I can’t imagine, other than for narcotics, that there was even 20 prosecutions of border patrol for the so-called abuse or depravation of rights issue. And now the illegal aliens have far more rights. We now have to question, okay, what is causing this is it’s not just money, it’s not just that. What is greater game at stake here? We know that Mexico, in the words of many snitches or informants who have infiltrated cartels, they’ve come back and told our government that the Mexican is the cartel, because if you can pick an administration from Mexico, one president or another or their administration has been backed by one cartel or another.

Let’s go back to Vicente Fox – no problems in Juarez. There was always the [0:13:07.7], but there wasn’t the mass civil war, drug war, going on in Juarez. All we ever heard about was Nuevo Laredo. Now, we go under Filipe Calderón and this is since 2007, since the very end of 2007, the beginning of 2008. But there’s a circumstance I’ll address in a second. You have hardly anything in the news about Nuevo Loredo. We know what’s going on down there. You hear about weapons caches, you hear about people being murdered, but all you hear about is Juarez, Juarez, Juarez. Now, what took place that changed that, it wasn’t just administrations. In El Paso, and this is something that I’ve testified to in congress, you have a situation where law enforcement goes to their congressman who is a former Border Patrol Chief Silvestre Reyes.

You may recall, Jason, that Silvestre Reyes was the congressman who didn’t know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia as he was about to become chairman of the House Intel Committee back in 2007.

Jason Hartman: Very scary, yeah.

Andy Ramirez: And yet he’s a former Border Patrol Chief. They go to him and he tells them get out of his office, go follow your chain of command. I don’t want to hear this. You know your chain of command – you stick to that, don’t come complaining to me – which tells us that there is a problem that we know for a fact – I’ve had numerous sources attest to this – that during this time period, a few things, big things, were taking place.

Number one, you had a lot of questionable decisions that were coming out of local command and customs. In fact, I’ve attested that from east of the Arizona deserts – we’ll say west of Nogales – from that point clear down past Fort Hancock, Texas, you have the most corrupt zone among law enforcement, and I’m not saying the rank and file, but somebody’s making decisions that have resulted in Mexican firefights with military encouragements taking place with the Border Patrol. You have massive drugs that have been moving through there. But let’s tighten it down to just El Paso. You have Luis Garcia who is the Director of Field Operations which makes him the top dog for customs. Everybody has to answer to him if they’re a customs officer. And he ordered the canines off the bridges in El Paso. Now, what does that mean? Well, canines are responsible for a large number of the seizures because when you get secondary or polled and you’ve got the dogs right there, the dogs are sniffing for dope, the dogs are gonna usually get a hit.

Jason Hartman: What was that word you just used? When you get secondary – I mean obviously the dog can sniff the drugs out – but when you get secondary what?

Andy Ramirez: Well, what happens is you go to the port of entry and if there’s something that just doesn’t seem right or something seems kind of wrong, what they’ll do is they’ll pull you aside into a second inspection location.

Jason Hartman: Right, right. And I’ve seen that at the border myself. Okay, got it.

Andy Ramirez: And so at that point then you have a few officers and/or agents that are right there that are taking a look at you, they’re checking out your documents, your passengers, if you’re carrying anything, then they bring a dog to sniff your vehicle. Well, the dogs were ordered off the bridges in El Paso.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. Why would they do that?

Andy Ramirez: When he was removed, what happened then was the dogs were placed on the bridges. Now all of a sudden we have a war on Juarez. And it wasn’t a coincidence because during the same time period, in this same jurisdiction, you had a memo that was out there – this has been referred to as the carpenter memo named after the person who submitted it to the employee at customs, telling them that if a person comes to the port of entry and they don’t have documentation, you can’t send them back. You don’t ask for any additional documentation, you admit them to the country.

Jason Hartman: That is shocking. That is just totally shocking.

Andy Ramirez: And ultimately that is what led him into forced retirement. So people understand this, when you get disciplined and you’re what’s called a monkey boy, a monkey boy basically means that somebody who’s a brownnose to the management or to the policies that are coming out of The White House, if they decide that this is gonna be the certain policy, and you’re gonna go along to get along, you’re considered a monkey boy, especially if I have the border patrol. So what they’ve done is these agencies have been stacked heavily. 2006, there was a massive purge of old guard. You can say that these were people who properly, for the most part, rose through the ranks and become Chief Patrol Agent or what have you – and I’ll stick to the border patrol for the example on this – they became the top do g in their border sectors for the US border patrol. But they were old guard. They were pretty much pre-BHS. They weren’t what we would call a David Aguilar or Tucson Mafia guy. Tucson Mafia refers to his guard within the border patrol. David Aguilar is a current CBP, Customs and Border Protection deputy commissioner. He was chief of the Border Patrol for a majority of the Bush presidency. And this would be the recent president Bush, George W. He filled – as the chief decided they weren’t gonna go along to get along – 8 of them retired between late 2006 and early 2007. And when that took place, all of the old guard that quit, he sold them with his people. So he chose Chief Patrol Agents, deputy chiefs.

There were 21 sectors which then was eliminated to 20 in 2004. So what he did then was he stacked it with his own people, people that were gonna go along to get along which is what led to a lot of publicity when it came out from two sector chiefs that Border Patrol’s primary mission is not to catch illegal aliens. I’ve seen it on tape where David Aguilar himself is telling the agents in two infamous musters in Tucson, Arizona. Your job isn’t to catch aliens. If you want to do that, go to ICE. Go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

So on tape, you have the top dog who is now number 2 in the entire parent agency or organization flowchart. This is the policy. It’s no wonder we’re not catching aliens. They stacked management, but they didn’t just do it there. They did it at customs, they did it at ICE. So it’s no wonder we’ve seen so much corruption. But why is this happening? Well, Mexico has always hated the fact that we have a border patrol. Their public policy has been in opposition. They don’t want anything to do with that. And so they’ve criticized it, the councils have criticized it, and that’s led to problems. That’s led to prosecutions. These prosecutions started happening as message senders. But the way the patter works is first they make a call to see if there’s an investigation.

Let’s say an agent reports that there was a compromise at the port of entry and 23 aliens from special interests nations – from countries that are considered by the state department to be sponsors to terrorism – if they pop through the port of entry in certain time period and that’s reported out, they’ll then try to fire that officer for doing their job. That is how bad it is inside of the federal services. And there are some who will try to discount it but I’ve seen the documentation. I’ve worked with far too many officers who have been fired. We had a security compromise once in Lake Champlain – this is upstate New York – where an Algerian rammed the port of entry and took out the radiation detection portals at the port of entry. He was on narcotics at the time and he was also carrying narcotics, wasn’t seatbelted in but he sped and took him out.

Now, rather than treat this as a potential terrorist incident, and this was not reported anywhere, what instead they did was the officer who was responsible for securing him, they decided that they wanted to, in order to keep this hush-hush, they decided to fire him for creating a panic in excessive use of force, something that we’re seeing in the Diaz case. But they couldn’t prosecute him, so they fired him. That is how the pattern has worked in most of these cases. They look for prosecution first, and if they can’t find that then they want to know if there’s been any previous investigations or any previous claims, even though those were proven to be false they still use that to say well there’s a pattern, there’s claims of abuse. And so that can become a basis for a prosecution. But if there’s nothing, then they’ll just use it to try to terminate.

An employee now, you may have legal insurance because you’re a member of your union or you may have handled a legal defense plan, but that usually covers up to a certain amount. And the government just stacks you with paper work, so if you go through the termination process, before you even get to the federal courts you’ve already spent $200,000. Now, if you’re an officer or agent, you don’t have that kind of money. You can’t pull that kind of cash out. It’s impossible. You could put up property and you could put up so much, but that’s only gonna hold you up for a certain time period because it’s so costly. And so what they do is they bury you in paperwork because they know you’ll never get out of it. A prosecutor once told one of the victims…

Jason Hartman: And a victim is a Border Patrol agent. Okay, go ahead.

Andy Ramirez: He once told Gary Brugman who was prosecuted by Johnny Sutton this would be Bill Baumann who is now one of the two chief litigants for the US Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas that Brugman said “Why are you doing this to me? Brugman asked the question and the prosecutor Baumann said “Well, I can do that because I have a million dollar budget to get your butt with.

Jason Hartman: See, that’s the problem. The government has this unlimited budget and it can just bury you with taxpayer funded paperwork and litigation and for whatever reason – if they decide they don’t like you or they don’t like your political party, I mean it happens in civil society, too, of course. So this is a very dangerous trend. Our government is being more diligent about supposedly cleaning up its internal affairs than it is about truly prosecuting the real bad guys. And they just want to have this open border. I mean, is it NAFTA? Is NAFTA really the culprit for all of this? The war on drugs appears to be just nothing more than a show. This is crazy. It’s just crazy. I mean this is too crazy for fiction.

Andy Ramirez: And that’s the funny thing is I could have dreamt this up, walked into a Hollywood producer or walked to the Paramount lot and said “You know what, I’ve got this manuscript that I think would be a great story – let me pitch this to you.” I would have gotten thrown out. They would have said “Oh my god, this is ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous, get out of my office.” And you know how Hollywood is about certain things. They would have tossed me on my butt for that one. But yet, this isn’t fiction. This is what’s taking place. It is so ridiculous, it’s not just the piling of paperwork, but it’s almost literally like you have a conspiracy at the top where they’re deciding that this is how we discredit this. A big issue with this is whistleblower protections.

I was sitting with chairman Benny Thompson when he was the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and this was after Secretary Napolitano testified on the hill. This would have been February of 2010. She was going for her appropriations, so she had to go before Homeland Security. And I talked to them immediately after the hearing. I went and introduced myself but he remembered me for my testifying for his committee and I said Mr. Chairman Ron, whistleblower protections may exist to you up here on the hill and to the other members of Congress up there on the hill, but they mean nothing in the real world. You have a situation that’s so insulated and so stacked with paperwork, and these guys when they get hit with these investigations, they don’t know what to do. They may know how to handle an investigation that they’re working on but suddenly they become the bad guy? Senator Feinstein, she had the best quote of this entire mess. This was stated during the Ramos-Compean hearings that she shared back in 2007. A, it’s no wonder there are so many drugs that cross the border is one thing she said. And, B, you’re making bad guys into good guys and good guys into bad guys. Well, that’s exactly what they’ve done but I’ll take it a step further. They’ve made drug smuggling – these are cartels, these are murderers, they’ll kill you for their drugs – and human traffickers, among the greatest sins to humanity – and yet they’ll make them victims.

This is how bad it is. In these cases, Jason, what they have done, is they have justified why a person is a narco terrorist, a drug smuggler.

Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. Our whole world is turning upside down. Suddenly, the victim is the bad guy, the bad guy is the victim, and please don’t tell me that it’s because he had a rough childhood or something like that.

Andy Ramirez: Yes, that’s what they’re saying. The Western District of Texas US Attorney Office stated that the reason Osvaldo Adrete-Davila – this is the Ramos Compean doper – was doing this was he had to take care of his poor, sick mother. In the Diaz case, this is one of them that I’m working on right now, he was prosecuted for lifting the handcuffs of an illegal alien that was apprehended, and of course all the testimony in that is just absurd. They sealed his case so that the defense and the family couldn’t put any of the documents out but we had had them months before. We had to make sure it didn’t apply to us which, when we did, we released the documents to the public. This was called discovery documentation which was used to prosecute him with. So what they do is they justified this guy saying oh, he had to take care of his baby. I mean this is ridiculous. You’re an American citizen. You’ve got to be sitting at home wondering, my god, where is Rod Surly? This isn’t anything that I can make up or you can make up. It’s documented.

Jason Hartman: We’ll be back in just a minute.

Narrator: Want to know what you’ve missed in the Creating Wealth series? Well, here’s your opportunity with Jason’s 5 book set. That’s shows 1 through 100 through digital download. You save $288 by getting this 5 book set. Learn all of the advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more details, go to JasonHartman.com.

Jason Hartman: It is amazing to me that the simple act of building a border fence just can’t be accomplished in this country. This is how completely ridiculous and how completely special interest laden and it’s absurd – this is just absurdity what goes on nowadays at every level. I recently moved from California to Arizona. I used to live in Orange County. And I moved to Arizona and I cannot believe the stuff that goes on here over the SP1070 thing. And now Alabama I guess passed the strictest immigration law in the entire country and how the federal government is attacking these states who simply want the federal government to do its job, protect and control the borders. Every country, what defines a country is it has a few things. It has borders, it has a set of laws, a philosophy, a belief system, and a culture. And it’s not to say that we shouldn’t have immigrants come to this country. The country was built on immigrants. It’s built on immigration. I mean, it’s like we just sold out to the corporatocracy. When I asked you follow the money, it’s hard to follow. You know it’s happening. It’s just crazy.

Andy Ramirez: There’s an irony to you mentioning the money because let’s look a look at that secure board of initiative which is something that came out of congressman Duncan Hunter. This is the senior Congressman Hunter who had retired. His son has since taken the seat and he’s doing a wonderful job. In fact, he’s actually the lead congressman working with us on the Diaz case. I can tell you that what he intended is not what’s been carried out by the Bush Administration or the Obama Administration who has done everything possible to foul that up. What he did was in San Diego. One can take a look at – I hate to make it comical – but take a look at the movie Born in East LA. If you look at when Cheech Marin is coming across the hill with these hundreds of people, that’s what’s known to a border patrol agent as a banzai charge.

So you have all these aliens that mass come in across. It used to be like that in San Diego because if you could get across the border, the city of San Diego stretches right through that border. You make it there, you’re home free because now you can blend in with the community. Since the fence was installed, and of course this is the original fence with the aircraft landing materials, when that was installed, the night and day difference between – because they had to slow down – now, when you have the new fencing that Hunter split up, which by the way, just so the public knows this, we didn’t even use American steel for that fence – they imported steel for Mexico and red China for that.

Jason Hartman: It’s just crazy. If we ever have to go to war with China and we gotta depend on the Chinese to supply the boots for our soldiers, we are in trouble.

Andy Ramirez: Exactly.

Jason Hartman: It’s just so illogical, it’s crazy.

Andy Ramirez: None of this makes any sense whatsoever. I once cracked the joke because Border Patrol uniforms were being made south of the border by one of the maquiladoras in Mexico. And I left and said let me guess next – their gold badges are gonna be also made in Mexico. So the cartels can now have GPS trackers…

Jason Hartman: GPS trackers and maybe microphones that transmit their conversations back to the drug traffickers as well.

Andy Ramirez: Well, that wouldn’t surprise me with current command. Here’s a true story. The congressman that is in El Paso that I mentioned before, Reyes, had the curator of the National Board of Patrol Museum once went to him and asked for contribution as they form a border patrol chief. And all of the retirees, for the most part, do put up out of their personal funds to continue the support for this museum, the National Border Patrol Museum. It’s a great place to learn the history of the agency, in fact. Well, she goes to him and he says “No, he has a conflict of interest.” So she says to him – his nickname is silver – “Silver, what’s your conflict of interest?” He said it was because he supports the Mexican immigrants museum at the University at the University of Texas El Paso. You can’t make this kind of stuff up.

Jason Hartman: You can’t make it up. Now, Andy, I gotta ask you – your last name is Ramirez – I mean you’re of Hispanic origin, right?

Andy Ramirez: Third generation, yes.

Jason Hartman: Third generation. So for you to be taking a position like this, it’s kind of interesting. You got started where you were just looking at homeland security and looking at holes in our security, right? Is that what originally interested you in this topic?

Andy Ramirez: Well, it was partially that. I’ve always been very political. I’ve always been very active. When I was 25, I decided I was running for office. I left school. I was at a community college, Mt. San Antonio Community College, and I was about to take a transfer to USC. It was at that point I thought to myself wait a second. We’ve got some serious financial problems in the state of California, so of course we can’t pass a budget to save our lives. Well, it was that that led me to run and I started taking a look at this, that and the other, but very active in that sense so when I became involved in this in 2004, I knew that I had the ability to reach people in the media, I knew I had the ability to talk with friends in elective office, but I didn’t think it was gonna become defending agents from prosecution or termination that I could never have envisioned that because I mean I was a guy born in East LA and you just can’t imagine yourself – or, as we joke, Baldwin Park, California – we call it Helltown, USA – I was a kid from Helltown, USA. I could never have imagine taking on the justice department and the Department of Homeland Security and defending agents for doing their jobs. I mean, like I said earlier, where’s Rod Serling and cue the music because this is something out of the twilight zone.

My friends laugh about this. They’re like Andy, we could have seen you in politics, but wow, this is something. But then I hear from so many of my friends and classmates and a great number of them are Hispanic, saying we are so proud of what you’re doing because you’re standing up for people who can’t stand up for themselves because they’re so shell shocked it’s like they wake up out of this fog and it’s like now what do we do? And, of course, like this Diaz case, his attorneys were free to introduce motions in the court because as they told his family, well, we gotta go back to that judge and we don’t want to piss her off. We don’t want her angry at us. So, I mean, these guys can’t even get a fair trial. They have suppression of evidence. Jurors – materials are being filtered to them, evidence is being filtered. So these lifetime appointed judges can do what they want and there’s no justice whatsoever. What you see in most courtrooms involved in these agents today is something you would see across the US/Mexico border taking place in Mexico.

Jason Hartman: It’s a kangaroo court in other words, right? Yeah, a kangaroo court.

Andy Ramirez: Exactly. It’s a total kangaroo court. If I could go back a second, though, and address the war on drugs, that’s just like no child left behind. Sure, unless you’re an illegal alien you’re not gonna be left behind. Or war on terror, war on this, war on that. The war on drugs – Sandy Gonzalez, he is a retired special agent in charge for DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration in El Paso, he has told me for years. Andy, how can you have a war on a substance? You could burn it, you could firebomb it, you could take a flamethrower to it, you can napalm it, you can do all that kind of stuff to it. But until you get to the root of the problem, they’re just words. And this is somebody who is fighting the fight for the US government in central America and South America. It was his agents who discovered and blew the whistle on the Iran counter affair. His agents were discovering a lot of things that was going on.

So, I mean, here’s somebody with experience. He was the assistant special agent in charge in Miami, dealing with the cocaine cowboys, these are the Colombian drug cartels. I mean the stuff that this man’s seen – and if he’s telling me that, well let’s for a moment look at our history. You have Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, this golden triangle. How many soldiers came home from Nam hooked on drugs with all sorts of connections from the Far East into The United States? You look at Afghanistan, how much more is being produced and coming out of their poppy fields? How much more opium is coming out of there today? Look at Panama. You didn’t like what was going on. Suddenly Noreaga gets his legs cut out from under him. A lot of this is about drugs. And that’s a scary thought because I’m a parent and I think to myself, okay, I got two children and I’m teaching them the good things. If you do right, follow the rules, be careful, pay attention, work hard, have fun, and that kind of thing, everything’s gonna be okay. You’ll get the reward. What you put into it is what you’re gonna get out of it and a little luck doesn’t hurt either. Now, you look at these cases.

Jason Hartman: That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, my friend. There’s always been a lot of injustice that goes on. But in the last 20 years, and I think it really parallels a lot of the trade stuff, keep in mind that you’re talking to someone who generally thinks of himself as a libertarian. I like the concept of free trade, but when you do it across borders and when you have all these special interests and the unions for better or worse – I mean mostly for worse I think – but I don’t know. Things are just much more nuanced and complex nowadays than just taking a philosophy. They’ve managed to muddy the waters so much that it’s hard to know what the right thing is anymore and hard to know what the right philosophy is anymore, frankly.

Andy Ramirez: Oh, it’s so true. I know I sit there and I get these calls from these agents and I listen to what they have to tell me or I get stuff in the mail or emails and I listen and I read and I’m just flabbergasted. I get called sometimes to go and testify on the hill and this is funny – this is actually a true story – what led to me testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, I actually didn’t ask. I was asked to testify – it was the Republicans who had asked me to testify – and you’ll find the reason most interesting. The member who requested me said “Andy, we need to know the truth. We just had David Aguilar, the chief of the Border Patrol, testify two weeks ago and so we’d like you to come up so we can hear the truth. How scary is that?

Jason Hartman: That is scary.

Andy Ramirez: A civilian, as I joked early – grew up Helltown, USA, Baldwin Park, California – and I’m being asked to go and counter as a civilian? I’m not law enforcement, I’ve never served a day in law enforcement. And I’m being asked to go and tell the truth because the chief of the border patrol won’t do that. That’s that time where you just gotta wonder what do we do to fix this problem? Is it guess work or is it this or is it that? How do we fix this problem? Because now that’s how bad it is. These agents who had to turn to somebody who’s not an attorney – I don’t have a law degree or anything like that – I stopped my schooling after after what is my associates. I stopped at that point and I’ve been doing this kind of work, government service but on the public side of this ever since. I’ve certainly not made any wealth off of it, far from it. What wealth, right? And it’s scary. I’ve become their line of defense. I mean that’s almost shameful in my opinion.

Jason Hartman: It is, it is. Just, in closing here, what is your prescription? I mean, what do we do about these problems? Certainly, they’re shining light on them. The light of truth hopefully will change some things, and it will. But other than that, what do we do? Do we need to become more of an isolationist country? Do we need to repeal NAFTA? Do we need to build a border fence? What needs to happen to set some things right?

Andy Ramirez: Well, we can start with infrastructure because building infrastructure helps and I don’t mean a virtual fence because a virtual fence – as a few agents have told me – does virtually nothing.

Jason Hartman: Yeah. And that was all subject to the political climate at the time. The virtual fence needs to be watched and that’s why I want a real fence, the kickbacks.

Andy Ramirez: And the financial kickbacks, because look at SBI – there’s a group called the board of patrol foundation and most of the corporations that were involved in that fraudulent SBI, Secure Borders Initiative, are now the main sponsors of this board of patrol foundation. So, I mean, there’s a joke in itself. But we start with infrastructure. We start with stopping these prosecutions. And Congress needs to do their part. Congress has failed the American people. This is one thing I have to touch on. In 2006, the republicans were actively looking at the Bush Administration for these types of issues and this type of corruption, but when they were voted out it stopped. John Conyers, when he was the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told me hell would freeze over before there was ever a hearing into this type of case, this type of a situation with corruption. So I was told firsthand by the big dog. Now, how do we fix this? We stay on top of Congress and we tell them they need to conduct serious investigations and real hearings. We need independent prosecutors that are specially appointed to go in and take a look at this corruption.

This isn’t about democrat or republican. This has gone on for so long, the D and the R have been irrelevant, except for where the hill is concerned because I’ll tell you this. The House has been trying to do their job there. They’ve held the hearings, they’ve exposed so much of this, they’ve been very supportive when it comes to these types of cases, but we the American people have failed because we’ve not held the Senate up to that standard, we certainly haven’t held The White House. These crimes are being committed by the executive branch. But their partners, their cohorts in this are the judicial branch, what needs to be done there and into lifetime appointments is a good start. Something has to be done because those two are in cahoots. It’s clear you get these decisions out of these judges. I mean, they know who’s perjuring themselves.

The Diaz case is a great example. The drug smuggler purges themselves. The witnesses against has purged themselves. You can see it, they admit it, it’s in the transcripts, it’s in the documents. And yet, he’s the one who goes to prison and the judge allows it? This is serious corruption, but we have to reform these agencies. Homeland Security, we gotta go and clean it out – clean up the whole rat’s nest of vermin that’s there. Take a look at ATF. There’s another agency that’s been out of control. Look at the death of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry murdered as part of this fast and furious gun locking where massive amounts of guns were getting walked across the Mexican border as part of that game. Two agents are dead. Agents are still out there with these non-lethal beanbag loads, facing drug cartels who are armed with machine guns.

Jason Hartman: Right, yeah. It makes no sense at all. It’s just ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Okay, so your prescription on what we do in a nutshell.

Andy Ramirez: We clean house. We have to clean house. The American people need to demand Congress cleans house, but we throw them out and find a group who will clean house on these administrations, stop accepting these lackeys that come out and decide that it’s their time to be president. No, we need somebody who’s gonna get in there and fix the problem. And the problem is clean house, do it in the light of day. Transparency to the Obama Administration – I hate saying this but that’s basically engaging in cover up in broad daylight. That’s what that is. That’s why they field these case files. I’ve never seen anything like this.

Jason Hartman: It’s crazy. It really is. Well, Andy, give out your website if you would so people can learn more.

Andy Ramirez: Oh, absolutely. Our website is AdvocatesCouncil.us. We are a nonprofit organization. We don’t get many grants or anything like that. We do the work we do and we try to help them with what little we can. We have the ability to do a lot. We just don’t have the funds to do it with. So anybody who makes a donation, it’s 100% tax write-off which you can get a gift letter from us since that’s what it goes for. We put it directly to the purpose it’s for. The website for the Diaz case is FreeAgentDiaz.com. You can learn more about his case. You can read his trial transcripts. You can see interviews that were done by his wife. His wife is a field operation supervisor for the Board of Patrol and that’s actually quite a game changer in itself because she’s not a civilian. She knows how they messed up because she’s an agent of 15 years herself. You can also read the documents that this judge sealed. Again, we made sure we were safe and that her order of protection so that none of this could be revealed didn’t apply to us. And when it didn’t, we published it immediately which we were going to do anyhow, but we had to make sure that we weren’t violating a court order either. So it’s FreeAgentDiaz.com to learn more about his case or AdvocatesCouncil.us to learn about us and the work we’re doing and for those of you that can help, we would deeply appreciate it because these agents don’t have a fighting chance. We depend on them to secure our nation, to secure our community. I would hope that everybody can join me and help us make sure that they’re staying on duty instead of losing everything.

Jason Hartman: Very good points. Well, Andy Ramirez, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate the insights.

Andy Ramirez: Thank you so much. I’m very appreciative. And the more people you can tell about us, the better.

Jason Hartman: Keep up the good work out there.

Narrator: Now is your opportunity to get The Financial Freedom Report. The Financial Freedom Report provides financial self-defense in uncertain times and it’s your source for innovative forward thinking investment property strategies and advice. Get your newsletter subscription today. You get a digital download and even more. Go to JasonHartman.com to get yours today.

Thank you for joining us today for The Holistic Survival Show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our Creating Wealth show which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www.JasonHartman.com or search “Jason Hartman” on iTunes. This show is produced by The Hartman Media Company, offering very general guidelines and information. Opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional. Information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. (Image: Flickr | CBP Photography)

Transcribed by Ralph


* Read more from Holistic Survival

Realistic Post-Apocalyptic Fiction from John Wesley Rawles

Claim Your Own Television Channel for Free


The Holistic Survival Team

Holistic-Survival-thumb31