Immigration board cites torture threat in ruling against ex-informant’s deportation

Panel: Threat precludes ex-informant’s deportation

EL PASO, Texas — A Justice Department immigration board has ruled that a former federal drug informant can’t be deported to Mexico because he would be tortured “either directly by government agents or indirectly by government agents turning him over to the cartel.”

Guillermo “Lalo” Ramirez Peyro, a Mexican national who informed on the powerful and violent Juarez cartel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, witnessed and tape-recorded homicides in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

The former police officer’s career as an informant ended after the 2004 discovery of a mass grave in a Juarez backyard. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says Ramirez “supervised the murder” of a Juarez cartel associate.

Ramirez has denied participating in any killings but the case embarrassed ICE, and federal immigration authorities have since pushed for his deportation.

In a statement e-mailed to reporters along with the unpublished ruling Wednesday, Ramirez’s lawyer Jodi Goodwin described the ruling as a “super-huge victory” for Ramirez.

Ramirez, who has most recently been held at an immigration jail near Buffalo, N.Y., has been held apart from other inmates because of fears he would be killed in jail.

Goodwin released the March 18 ruling a day after a very public U.S. show of support for Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s three-year war against powerful and vicious drug cartels that has left nearly 18,000 people dead, including nearly 5,000 in Juarez alone.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led a delegation of top-level security officials at meetings Tuesday with Mexican leaders and pledged to help tackle the problem.

Officials at Mexico’s Interior Department, which handles domestic security and political affairs, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Associated Press for reaction to the Ramirez decision. Officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has led the fight to deport Ramirez, also did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.

The ruling from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals concludes Ramirez can’t be deported right now because of pervasive corruption “at all but the highest levels of government” and because he is likely to be tortured and killed if returned to Mexico.

The three-page ruling reverses a previous board decision to send Ramirez home to Mexico but upholds the decisions of a federal immigration judge and an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year that concluded he was likely to be tortured there.

Attorney General Eric Holder could overturn the ruling.

Ramirez “has proven that he more likely than not would be tortured upon removal by or with the acquiescence of a public official of the Mexican government,” the board ruled.

But the decision, the ruling notes, is temporary and can be reversed “should the Mexican government make significant inroads in its battle against drug cartels and corruption.”

The ruling’s impact on other deportation and even asylum cases for Mexican nationals remains unclear.

Daniel Kowalski, an Austin, Texas-based immigration lawyer who has reviewed the decision, said the ruling is narrowly focused on Ramirez’s case.

“There’s no general principle that can or should be drawn from this case,” Kowalski said.

But he added that the ruling that Ramirez would be tortured by Mexican agents or with the help of Mexican government officials could embolden immigration lawyers in other cases.

“It’s likely to encourage immigration lawyers to raise the claim (of torture) more often and with more confidence,” he said.

Associated Press writer Martha Mendoza contributed to this report from Mexico City.