José Alonso Compeán and Ignacio Ramos
Who pardoned them: George W. Bush
What they were pardoned for: Various charges related to shooting someone
Why it was controversial: José Alonso Compeán and Ignacio Ramos were United States Border Patrol Agents who stopped a drug smuggler at the border with over 800 lbs of drugs, and shot at him when he fled. This probably would have been fine, except they failed to report it to their supervisors, gathered up the shell casings to cover up the shooting, and filed a false report. When Bush granted them a pardon, some felt it was a tacit approval on behalf of the government of a kind of frontier justice, where men who broke the law were given clemency simply because the victim of their crime was a convict and illegal alien.