REPUBLICANS VOW TO STUDY SHOOTINGS CASE

EL PASO, Texas -- Republican congressmen said Thursday they would call for
an investigation into why two U.S. Border Patrol agents were prosecuted
then convicted this year of shooting a drug-smuggling suspect and trying to
cover it up.

They were in El Paso for a House Judiciary Committee field hearing on
immigration, one of about a dozen such hearings around the country this month.

Indiana U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, a member of the House Subcommittee on
Immigration, Border Security and Claims, pledged to take up the case of
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean. They were convicted in March on
several felonies and a civil rights violation.

Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican whose
House bill calls for the criminalization of illegal immigrants and other
immigration enforcement reforms, called for an investigation into the case.

Several other House members, including Democrat Silvestre Reyes, who led
the El Paso Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol before being elected to
Congress, also agreed to support a probe.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of the nonprofit Friends of the Border Patrol, asked
the committee to launch the investigation, saying the men were wrongly
prosecuted and convicted "for simply doing their job."

None of the representatives said whether they would look to overturn the
men's convictions.

Amid a strong showing of security around the Chamizal National Monument
along the border in El Paso, the committee also heard divergent testimony
from law enforcement officials on whether local officers should enforce
immigration laws.

El Paso Police Chief Richard Wiles, whose department polices the largest
American city on the southern border, called the proposal a mistake.

"We don't have the time, we don't have the resources," Chief Richard Wiles
told the committee. "It's not even proper to ask. It causes dissension."

Sensenbrenner, who has become a polarizing figure in the national
immigration debate, asked Wiles if he would support a law allowing officers
to enforce immigration laws while enforcing state criminal statutes.

"We do not want to become agents of immigration," Wiles answered.

El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego took the opposite stance.

"One step away from the federal line is our jurisdiction," he said. "We,
the sheriffs, have to deal with the consequences" of a porous border.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, of the American Immigration Lawyers Association,
told the committee that immigration law is simply too complex to be left to
local law enforcement.

The Republican committee members, who sat in the majority Thursday, were
greeted by a vocally hostile audience of about 200 onlookers. Sensenbrenner
warned the audience several times that they were not to audibly respond to
any comments or testimony.

Outside the hearing, which was not open for public comment, about 100
protesters chanted and waived signs telling Sensenbrenner he was not
welcome. Some protesters, carrying caricatures of Sensenbrenner as a member
of the Ku Klux Klan, decried him as a racist.

After the hearing, Sensenbrenner defended H.R. 4437, his controversial
House immigration bill passed last year, and countered accusations he was
being racist.

"When you can't argue the merits, you call names," he said. "I authored the
voting rights extension bill ... signed by President Bush. Racists don't do
that."

Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a Houston Democrat and the ranking minority member
on the Subcommittee on Immigration, called the series of Republican-led
hearings a "traveling road show."

Throughout the morning hearing and in a brief press conference afterward,
Jackson-Lee urged her Republican counterparts to meet with the Senate to
create a unified bill. The Senate passed an immigration reform bill this
year that included a path to legalization.