We admit it.
Old reporters are like milk wagon horses. Those nags raise their ears at the sound of the bell, even after they're put to pasture.
When I graduated from J school I got a job with the Brownsville Herald. The daily put me on the federal beat. At that time (late 1970s) judges Reynaldo Garza and Filemon Vela (Sr.) used to hold court on the second floor in the old federal courthouse on Elizabeth. Vela came across as a stern disciplinarian while Garza tended to be more laid back, yet firm.
Seeing how we we're on the border, many of the cases had to do with all kinds of smuggling; arms and money flowed south, drugs and human beings north. There was little variation on the theme, only the details of specific cases changed.
I remember one case where the public defender then, one Lazaro Cardenas, since deceased, actually got off a defendant who had been charged with transporting an alien. It turned out that an elderly man was driving late at night past the levee on East Street (before it was moved to accommodate Los Tomates Bridge) and he saw a woman walking in the dark.
It was a dark, desolate spot and the old man knew it was a dangerous place for anyone - especially a woman - to be walking alone and stopped. She got in and just a little down the road he was stopped by the Border Patrol and charged with transporting an alien.
Cardenas argued that what was meant to be a Good Samaritan act had resulted in a federal indictment by overzealous federal prosecutors and Garza agreed and dismissed the case against the old man.
Things, they say, have a way of coming full circle. I say this because one of the many transporting aliens cases had to do with a 19-year-old kid from Santa Maria who was gar fishing with some friends on a canal near the rural burg. The weather was pleasant for November. It hovered near 80 during the day, perfect for wetting a line and shooting the breeze.
Gar fishing is one of the most popular past times along the river, where some monsters more than five feet long have been snagged. The nasty looking fish is unknown in many places upstate.
The friends were chatting it up and hoping for a bite from one of the big alligator gar that lurk in the waters in the river and the many irrigation channels that line the fields along it. The case file showed that they had been biting, with a couple of the gar at least three feet long.
As they talked, two men walked along the canal and came up to them and asked them if they could get a ride to a nearby gas station. The 19-year-old, Angel Garcia, a native of Sana Maria, said he'd do them the favor and left his fishing pole with his friends to drive them there because it was up a ways.
But, alas, an eagle-eyed deputy constable from Precinct 5 stopped Garcia for a minor traffic infraction and noticed that the men's shoes were muddy. Garcia explained they had been fishing along the canal, but the deputy contacted a local Border Patrol agent and found out that the two men were in the country illegally.
In a flash, a pleasant fishing afternoon turned into a nightmare for Garcia. Court documents indicate that he was charged with illegally transporting two illegal aliens in reckless disregard of the law, a felony. For me, it was deja vu all over again as in the case of the elderly man charge with the same crime decades ago.
And, as we said, above, some things come full circle because by circumstance his defense attorney turned out to be none other than Reynaldo (Trey) Garza III, judge Garza's grandson.
Garza posted bond for him in federal court in Brownsville and saved Garcia the pleasure of spending two months in jail awaiting trial at taxpayer expense. Like Cardenas had done before in his grandfather's court, Garza argued that the only crime his client had committed was trying to give someone in need a helping hand, something that country boys are taught to do. Bizarrely, a simple act of kindness had turned out to be interpreted as a felonious act.
Grudgingly, the Asst. U.S. Attorney agreed to dismiss the felony transporting charge and lowered it down to a misdemeanor aiding and abetting their unlawful presence in the country. Garza, through his advocacy, had gotten Garcia off the hook.
This got me thinking. Are those people who leave plastic gallon bottles with water so thirsty illegal immigrants in the woods won't die of thirst and dehydration in violation of the law? Taking it further, if you came upon an illegal alien dying on the ground and gave them CPR, would that be aiding and abetting?
This is not as theoretical as it might sound for those of us living along the border. Next time you are driving down the highway and see someone in need of a ride, will you have to think twice about lending a helping hand? And if you're religious, will you ask yourself WWJD?
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