An ICE agent and supervisor seem to have been among the first officials to cross
the line into a cover-up when they crossed the border sometime in the fall of
2003 to meet the informant Lalo at the House of Death in Juarez. The ICE
officials took the step of posing as tourists, law enforcement sources say, to
avoid informing the Mexican government and their counterparts at DEA of the
visit.
The purpose of the visit, law enforcers say, was, in part, to satisfy curiosity, to get
a tour of the house, “to see where the bodies were buried,” according to one
source. The duo allegedly even took photographs.
The next play in the cover-up occurred in the wake of the DEA agent and his
family being stopped in early January 2004 by Loya’s goons in Juárez. As a
result of that incident, DEA evacuated all of its agents from the Mexican border
town.
In an effort to snare Loya, DEA agents, working with Mexican federal law
enforcement, came up with a plan that called for the informant Lalo to contact
Loya to arrange a meeting. The Mexican law enforcers planned to surprise
Mexican police comandante Loya at that meeting and take him into custody.
However, according to several law enforcement sources, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Fielden refused to allow DEA agents access to the informant so that the meeting
could be arranged. As a result, Loya and three of his henchman slipped through
the grasp of Mexican federal law enforcers and escaped. And, according to U.S.
law enforcers, Loya added to the carnage prior to his vanishing act by killing two
more people in Juárez in broad daylight the day after his men stopped the
vehicle of the DEA agent and his family.
The irony of Loya’s escape – which was allegedly enabled by a U.S. prosecutor –
is that U.S. Attorney Sutton has since dropped the murder charges against Loya
claiming that Mexican authorities have a “superior interest” in prosecuting Loya.
Gonzalez registered his outrage with the botched plan to snare Loya in a Feb.
24, 2004, letter (PDF) he addressed to ICE El Paso chief John Gaudioso. A copy
of the same letter also was sent to Sutton.
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