Invitation is meant to prod president

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher invited the wife of a convicted Border Patrol agent to Tuesday's State of the Union address, hoping to increase the pressure on President Bush to pardon the man and another agent.

The agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, began a prison sentence Jan. 17 after being convicted of shooting a drug smuggler who later claimed he was unarmed.

Rohrabacher, who represents Costa Mesa, said he invited Monica Ramos to the speech as his guest so the president could see her face-to-face. The agents' families are being "driven into destitution" by the conviction, Rohrabacher said — the Compeans lost their home, and both families lost their health insurance.

"We have two families whose lives are being obliterated because the president is too stubborn, perhaps too arrogant to look at what the justice department has done," Rohrabacher said.

Bush has said he will consider the request for a pardon. That move, Rohrabacher said, "is after incredible pressure. The fact is we could have talked this out quietly months and months ago."

Inviting Monica Ramos is "an interesting sort of preventive move" by Rohrabacher, probably aimed at Bush's immigration policy, said Louis De Sipio, a political science professor at UC Irvine.

The president was expected to talk about comprehensive immigration reform Tuesday, but Rohrabacher and some other Republicans have opposed any plan that includes a guest-worker program.

"My take is he [Bush] wants to be remembered for something," De Sipio said. "Immigration is probably it because there's a bipartisan consensus, at least in the Senate."

Members of the Minuteman Project, an anti-illegal-immigration group, rallied at Rohrabacher's Huntington Beach office Tuesday afternoon to show support for his stance on the agents' case, a spokeswoman for Rohrabacher said.