By Tom Ramstack
AHN (All Headline News)
August 30, 2011 02:39 pm EDT
A Mexican man who claims to be a former spy for the Drug Enforcement Administration is seeking asylum in the United States as he faces deportation to Mexico, where he says he will certainly be murdered by drug cartels.
Jose Alberto Moreno Ramos says he informed on the drug cartels in Arizona but was turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation when he criticized the DEA for not paying him. He also accuses the agency of corruption.
Moreno Ramos is facing deportation at a time when the crackdown on drug smuggling is taking on more of a bi-national character along the Mexican border.
Mexican police recently started staging raids based in the United States with assistance from U.S. law enforcement agencies.
Moreno, who is being held in a deportation center in El Paso, TX, says he has information about U.S. and Mexican law enforcement operations that would make both sides uncomfortable if it was revealed publicly.
He has been asking for assistance from the news media in El Paso.
“I know many things of interest about how the governments of the United States and Mexico work,” he said in a letter published by the El Diario of El Paso newspaper. “The most likely is that they will assassinate me, but I want to say a lot of things.”
He says he worked under contract for the DEA in Nogales, AZ, where he would cross the border into Mexico to infiltrate drug gangs.
“Notwithstanding that, and the fact they haven’t paid me, they have me here locked up,” Moreno said. “People need to know a lot of things so they will not fall into the traps of the government and the mafia, which are the same thing.”
Moreno says he has been incarcerated at the deportation center for 26 months. He said he had his last court date three months ago but still is awaiting a judgment in his effort to avoid being deported.
An Immigration and Naturalization Service report says Moreno has a history of arrests and confinements stretching back to 1998, when he was arrested for drunk driving. He also has been deported previously, according to police.
Moreno so far has given few details of the secrets he might know about drug interdiction efforts along the border.
However, some U.S. officials have been dropping hints about recent clandestine operations authorized by the Obama administration.
They allow Mexican commandos to hide in designated areas in the United States and to send helicopters back across the border after drug smugglers.
The DEA provides logistical support and information that helps guide Mexican tactics.
The operations help Mexican commandos evade surveillance by drug gangs that closely watch police movements along the border, according to U.S. officials. They also help to avoid corrupting influences that might negate any police crackdowns in Mexico.
The joint law enforcement efforts were made possible through agreements between Mexican President Felipe Calderon and President Barack Obama.
Calderon started calling for more assistance from the United States shortly after he ordered in troops in December 2006 to help police shut down drug cartels. Only after meetings with Obama in the past year has he said he is getting the cooperation he sought.
Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns clarified the U.S. role in the partnership with Mexico during a trip he made to Mexico this month.
“Our role is not to conduct operations,” Burns said. “It is not to engage in law enforcement activities. That is the role of the Mexican authorities. And that’s the way it should be.”
More than 35,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s war against drug cartels in the past five years.
The latest mass killing in the war occurred last week, when arsonists set fire to a casino in Monterrey. Fifty-two people were killed.
The five men arrested Monday were associated with the Zetas drug cartel, according to Rodrigo Medina, governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. The men confessed to setting the fire because the casino owner refused to pay them protection money.
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90058630?Mexican%20facing%20deportation%20claims%20to%20be%20DEA%20spy#ixzz1WYu08xk3
