La Ley De Fuga

One day I was sitting in a Mexican food restaurant owned by a friend, while enjoying a plate of the best red chile enchiladas known to mankind, incapable of being reproduced in any other locale; when in through the door walks a U.S. Border Patrolman who seemed almost in tears.

He sat at my table and told me that earlier he and several of his fellow Agents were standing near the Mexican/US gate at the U.S. Port of Entry Columbus talking with one another when suddenly a man wearing only a pair of pants ran screaming through the Border gate from the Mexican side and crossing over into the United State side. Hot on his heels were about twenty men, Mexican "Aduana", the equivalent of United States Customs Officers chasing him.

The man ran right into the arms of the Border Patrolmen standing there and began crying, thinking that he was now safe from his tormentors. The Aduana chasing him were grateful to the Border Patrolmen thinking they had caught him for them. A big heated argument began when the Customs Port Director showed up and stated that the Border Patrol had to let the man go because he was now on U.S. soil. The Port Director stood unbudging in his official pronunciamento and so finally the Border Patrolmen who were more than willing to let the Aduana have him back acquiesced and let the man walk away.

Needless to say the Mexican Aduana were livid with rage. They began to mutter that there would be no help from them in the future and that no U.S. lawmen would be safe in Mexican from now on, and other dire threats that they were fully capable of completing. The history behind this situation is that myself and all the Border vegetable soup gang Agencies had gathered together and decided that we would work diligently to befriend any and all Mexican officials in the hopes that by befriending them we could accomplish more when we needed information, finding suspects or missing property in Mexico.

For several years we put on dinners for they and their families, we supplied them with hard to find and much needed police equipment and did other things for them to help them and we made a great deal of progress in doing so. It seems as though this one incident was going to smash all that we had worked for in our relationship with our Mexican brothers.

After my Border Patrol friend was through with his story, I asked him where the man was at that time. He told me that he was walking down the highway between the Mexican Border and the Village of Columbus with a big smile on his face and not a seeming care in the world. I entered my vehicle and began driving towards Mexico on the highway looking for the man. I soon found him and so I stopped in the middle of the road, rolled down my window and asked him if he wanted a ride. He said, "Yeah, don't mind if I do." He walked up to my car and I stood there with the door open, he suddenly realized that it was a patrol vehicle with a cage in the back and he tried to resist, so I shoved him in the back and closed the door behind him.

The Columbus Port of Entry is a Federal facility located within the Columbus Village limits that was part of my jurisdiction. I returned this wanted man to the U.S./Mexican Port of Entry Gate and released him to the custody of the Mexican officials waiting there, and good relations with Mexican was restored. My investigation found that this man was part of a large narcotics smuggling group out of the L.A. area, and that the reason he was wanted in Mexico was because he was caught passing large amounts of counterfeit Mexican and American currency there. This man had failed to show up on U.S. official's radar as a suspect yet, and he wasn't wanted in the U.S., but there was a vast amount of intelligence on him and he was known as a bad actor.

A crook in Mexico is a crook in the U.S. I gained the undying animosity of the Customs Port Director when he tried to berate me for not following his orders, I simply told him that his Port of Entry was situated within my jurisdiction and his orders did not apply to me.

There is a post script to this story in that the man I returned to the Mexican officials was shot and killed while trying to escape a second time,"La Ley De Fuga". Justice was served. I fully suspect that there are those who may disapprove of this story, but please keep in mind that this area of the United States is a hard, uncivilized place, filled by hard men whose law is the gun.