Noe Aleman: My Official Statement

On behalf of my wife Isabel and our daughters, I want to thank those in El Paso who have maintained their support of us. I especially want to thank Friends of the Border Patrol for inviting us to this press conference along with our other fellow victims who all have been betrayed and had our civil rights violated. Like the others, we have been quite overwhelmed by our own government's persecution. The cost to my family is something one could never imagine possible living here in the United States.

I, too, want to echo Mrs. Compean when it comes to the lack of support for agents and American citizens in need, in El Paso, by my fellow former agent Silvestre Reyes. Our family contacted Silver Reyes, too, for his assistance when our persecution began at the hands of the Department of Justice. Unlike Agents Compean and Ramos, he did meet with us and promised to help our family. However, that help was an empty promise. After meeting with him (and his staff) five different times, Silver finally informed us that there was nothing he could do. He did not help us at all.

The Department of Justice and Johnny Sutton prosecuted me, and violated every aspect of not only our civil rights, but also basic human rights for nothing more than a typo.

My wife Isabel and I adopted as our daughters, my wife's blood nieces in the courtroom of Judge Patricia Macias, presiding judge in the Texas State District Court located in El Paso. On February 12, 2004, Judge Macias granted my wife and I unconditional adoption, which took place on April 23, 2004.

We enrolled our daughters in school as ordered by Judge Macias. At no time could we ever have imagined what would soon take place.

My wife Isabel asked me to look at our I-94 visa to see when the standard 90-day visa would expire so we could renew it. I was surprised, having been too excited when we picked them up at the El Paso Port of Entry with Juarez, MX to note that the document had provided one sole business day for their permission to enter the
United States on legal business.

Mr. Ramirez has investigated and informed me that the standard practice when issuing entry visas at the ports of entry is to provide for 90 days.

I reported what I thought was a typo error at the Hawkins (TX) Citizenship and Immigration Services office. I was advised by an immigration attorney while at the CIS office to ask for an adjudication officer and seek an extension of the "parole" as it is known. I did exactly as I was advised, which I was informed by the immigration attorney, who guaranteed me that it would not be a problem having already gone through the adoption process with the Texas State District Court in El Paso.

After a number of contacts with the Hawkins office, I was advised that our visa had been approved and to come and pick up the paperwork, and bring your daughters and identification for them, which we did. I was then arrested and later charged with harboring illegal aliens.

My case was tried in the same federal courtroom, by the same participants as Agent Ignacio Ramos.

The Department of Justice never presented the facts in our cases, they just made things up as they went along, as they have done with Agents Compean, Ramos, Brugman, Sipe, Rhodes, Deputy Sheriff Hernandez, and K-9 Officer Mohr.

Here is just a sampling of what Sutton's prosecutors did to my family and how our civil rights were violated:

First, I was charged with smuggling my own legally adopted nieces. Yet, the government has never opposed the adoption paperwork as finalized by the State of Texas, which remains valid today. This was the same type of false statement that Sutton has done to Agents Compean and Ramos though they claim that Agents Compean and Ramos are the wrongdoers and filed false statements.

Next, the government through agents from the Office of Inspector General and the FBI interrogated our daughters without counsel present and were trying to get the girls to admit they were being abused, which they vehemently denied. Is this not a violation of the civil rights of our daughters for being questioned without counsel present to protect their rights? When I think of what the government did to protect the non-existent rights of career drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila as compared to the civil rights of our daughters, it makes my wife and I ill every time knowing what happened to our daughters, and fellow Agents Compean and Ramos as well as their families.

After no evidence of abuse was discovered from this hostile and illegal interrogation, in which the girls were traumatized psychologically; our daughters were, in retaliation for not lying to the government, placed in Removal Proceedings late June 2004.

At the Immigration Hearing on June 20, 2005, our daughters, through their counsel, applied for Admission to the US based on the fact that they are legally adopted daughters of US Citizen Parents. The Immigration Judge denied the Application and ordered them removed. We appealed the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals ("BIA"), who upheld the original ruling. Our daughters were subsequently deported though their legal and only family remains here in the US.

My daughters were denied all visitation, and communication to us by the Department of Justice throughout this process, though, again, the girls are our legally adopted daughters.

I was informed that according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Kanof that our grand jury hearing transcripts would never see the light of day, exactly what would have happened to my fellow agents Compean and Ramos' transcripts without the help of Congress.

Finally, Johnny Sutton's assistants exercised excessive and abusive interrogations and during testimony before the grand jury our daughters were addressed as "little whores" by the Assistant US Attorney who conducted the hearing on behalf of the Government.

What kind of disgusting place has America become to engage in such tactics against its own citizens and children. While this case has nothing to do with my job performance, it defines the hypocrisy of the so-called Department of JUSTICE who protects dopers, and not agents who do their job, families, or it's children.

This Department of Justice provides just the opposite and I join Mrs. Compean in calling for the impeachments of Attorney General Gonzales, and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for protecting dopers illegally here, while betraying and preying on young children and violating their civil and human rights.

Thank you.

(From Friends of The Border Patrol's "The Bush War on Law Enforcement" Press Conference April 24, 2007 in Washington DC)