In the fleeting days of the Bush Administration, now-former-President George W. Bush finally brought some sense of closure and reparation by commuting the sentences of former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story of Ramos and Compean, here is the SparkNotes version:

At 1 p.m. on Feb. 17, 2005, agents Ramos and Compean — both of Mexican descent — spotted someone illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Following their job description, they pulled over the would-be illegal immigrant only to discover that it was known drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Dávila, toting nearly 800 lbs. of marijuana in his van.

The criminal then fled the scene wielding something that appeared to the officers to be a gun. Acting in preemptive self-defense, Compean fired at the man. Ramos, hearing the gun shot, thought his partner was in danger and fired to defend his comrade. Ramos struck, Forrest Gump style, hitting Dávila “directly in the buttocks.”

The smuggler continued to run, and made it back across the border and into Mexico. Since this was out of the agents’ jurisdiction, and believing that the man was unharmed, the agents did not pursue further. They then filed an inaccurate police report and attempted to cover-up the event. Meanwhile, the drug dealer who attempted to smuggle several hundred pounds of pot across the border filed a $5 million lawsuit against the U.S. federal government claiming that his civil rights were violated.

In the proceedings following the incident, Ramos and Compean were eventually found guilty on several accounts, including discharging a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. This charge carries with it a minimum sentence of 10 years. Ultimately, Ramos and Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in federal prison while the drug-smuggling/dealing illegal alien they stopped received immunity and temporary visas into the United States in exchange for his testimony against the agents.

Needless to say, there has been immense outcry from Democrat and Republican alike for this ridiculous outcome since their incarceration in January 2007. The fact that our very own federal government would side with a criminal over the very agents whose job it is to keep these people out of our country is absolutely ludicrous. By the way, the criminal to whom they granted immunity ended up, not surprisingly, committing several other crimes within our country, for which he now faces up to 40 years of prison time.

What really came to a head in this case was the over-emphatic execution of the flawed logistics within the legal system. The federal law that requires a minimum 10-year sentence for any sort of violent crime committed with a gun was put in place to do two specific things: to ensure that any gang-banging criminal who enlists the use of a gun to assist him/her in their dirty deeds would not be let off the hook because of some pathetic technicality and to dissuade all the wanna-be petty criminals from using guns in their late-night 7-11 hold-ups.

The law was not put in place to discourage officers from drawing their weapons in self defense or execution of their oath to protect. By going after Ramos and Compean so intensely, the prosecutors managed to misconstrue this law and let law-enforcement officers everywhere believe that the government that they serve is not behind them.

Former-President Bush did the right thing in shortening the sentences of these two agents from nearly another decade of unjust punishment to effectively ending their sentence in March of this year. Ramos and Compean were not right in covering up their incident, and for that they have done their time. But they were right in their attempt to protect our nation from yet another criminal invasion from our porous southern border.

In the future, I hope that lawmakers will recognize and differentiate between the scum who intend to use weapons in violent crimes and the people who voluntarily put their lives on the line and must use guns to protect themselves and the people they serve. Only then can we effectively use the law in the pursuit of justice.

Reach columnist Jeff Dickson at opinion@dailyuw.com.