A district lawyer in Texas has unveiled plans to hunt the demise penalty in an alleged homicide case that grew to become a outstanding speaking level within the 2024 United States presidential election.
On Friday, Harris County District Lawyer Kim Ogg filed a discover indicating her resolution to hunt demise sentences for Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26.
The crime they’re accused of committing grew to become a centrepiece in Republican Donald Trump’s marketing campaign for re-election in November.
The 2 suspects are Venezuelan nationals, they usually crossed the border into the US with out the correct documentation to take action. US Border Patrol briefly arrested them after their entry into the US, however they have been launched and given notices to look in courtroom at a later date.
A number of months later, in June, the 2 males allegedly kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, leaving her physique in a Houston creek.
Trump and his allies repeatedly pointed to the case as proof that the US wants tighter border safety and stiffer penalties for migrants and asylum seekers concerned in crimes.
He additionally campaigned with Nungaray’s mom, Alexis Nungaray, who visited the US-Mexico border with Trump and testified earlier than Congress about her ordeal.
In Friday’s announcement, District Lawyer Ogg echoed a few of the criticisms of immigration enforcement that Trump made on the marketing campaign path.
“Jocelyn’s homicide was as vile, brutal and mindless as any case in my tenure as district lawyer,” Ogg stated in a press release.
“And it was made worse by realizing that these two males have been right here illegally and, had they been held after being captured on the border, they’d by no means have had the chance to homicide Jocelyn and destroy her household’s future.”
In June, prosecutors filed capital homicide fees towards the 2 suspects, who’re being held in jail on $10m bonds.
A number of research, nevertheless, have proven immigrants generally are much less prone to commit crimes than US-born residents.
One survey of arrest data in Texas, funded by the Nationwide Institute of Justice, found this to be a constant pattern, throughout all totally different classes of crimes, from site visitors offences to property crime.
It concluded that undocumented immigrants are arrested “at lower than half the speed of native-born US residents for violent and drug crimes and 1 / 4 the speed of native-born residents for property crimes”.
Nonetheless, President-elect Trump usually conflated immigration with criminality on the marketing campaign path, stirring fears of violence.
He used these fears to blast his rivals within the Democratic Get together, accusing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of permitting “open borders”.
Irregular migration throughout the US-Mexico border did attain a file excessive underneath Biden’s presidency, but it surely has since declined to ranges akin to Trump’s first time period, from 2017 to 2021.
Month-to-month border patrol “encounters” in October, for instance, slumped to 106,344. In accordance with a press release that month from US Prospects and Border Safety, the variety of border patrol apprehensions was “the bottom it has been” for the reason that 2020 fiscal yr.
Biden has additionally imposed strict policies to limit asylum on the border, just like actions Trump himself had taken. One measure, introduced in June, allowed the suspension of asylum functions if irregular border crossings surpassed 2,500 individuals per day.
Others included penalties like a five-year ban on reentry and doable prison prosecution.
However, Trump lashed Biden and Harris, the Democratic candidate within the 2024 race, as dangerously irresponsible of their border enforcement insurance policies.
Leaning into darkish, nativist rhetoric, he warned of a migrant “invasion” besieging the nation and pledged to pursue a marketing campaign of “mass deportation” on his first day in workplace.
To take action, Trump has indicated he plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which supplies the federal authorities the ability to deport foreigners throughout instances of conflict.
“We are going to start the most important deportation operation within the historical past of the US,” Trump instructed supporters at a campaign stop in October. “We are going to shut the border. We are going to cease the invasion of illegals into our nation. We are going to defend our territory. We won’t be conquered.”
Trump has additionally known as for the “demise penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a legislation enforcement officer”.
Critics, together with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), accuse Trump of endeavor an “unparalleled execution spree” throughout his final time period in workplace: His administration oversaw 13 federal executions in its closing six months alone.
The Republican chief ceaselessly performed a video of Alexis Nungaray at his rallies, describing in heart-wrenching element how she found her daughter strangled to demise.
“She could be alive right this moment if Kamala had carried out her job,” Trump posted on his social media account earlier this yr.
