IS AN AMBULANCE CHASER WAITING IN THE WINGS IN ZAPATA CASE?

By Juan Montoya
If you read the account of the 17 questions that the family of slain ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata has for the federal government regarding the rules agents must follow when working in Mexico, it's easy to see that there is a lawsuit in the offing.
Now, as congressional hearings are under way to determine whether firearms purchased in the United States were used in his slaying and the killing of at least another Border patrolman, the calls are mounting for U.S. personnel t be armed in the course of their work in Mexico.
Officials believe at least one of the firearms used in the February murder Zapata in Mexico was purchased in the United States and smuggled into Mexico. Members of the Zetas criminal organization are alleged to have committed the crime.
Zapata and his partner, Victor Avila, also a special agent with ICE, were required to drive unescorted and unarmed across a highway known to be dangerous
Authorities have said that some 83 spent shell casings were found at the scene of the assault. The unarmed agents had traveled to San Luis Potosí to meet with U.S. personnel assigned to Monterrey to pick up some equipment and were returning to Mexico City, authorities said. There are said to have been more than 10 aggressors involved in the attack.
Zapata’s family also wants to know if there are rules or laws that prohibit agents from carrying weapons for protection while working in Mexico.
The Zapata family’s attorney, Trey Martinez, was not immediately available for comment because he was in Washington, his office told the Brownsville Herald.
Now, we may disagree with the rules in place between both countries. Nonetheless, those are the rules of engagement agreed to between the two nations.
Some folks, like my Dad, for instance, doesn't believe that U.S. agents should be sent to Mexico at all.
"The whole system is corrupt," he told me recently. "Who's going to protect them?"
Still others, like a prominent businessman who works on both sides of the border, says that agents – like soldiers – know what they're getting into when they sign up for service. Although he sympathises with the Zapata family, he says the men and women who work for the government know the risks ahead of time.
"We have our soldiers brought home from the war all the time," he said. "In Zapata's case we named a road and some other public facilities for him that we didn't do for our soldiers. Now it seems like there a lawyer out there already working to sue the government. And really, the government is all of us."