A district legal professional 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 Legal professional 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 right 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 court docket at a later date.
Just a few 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 Legal professional Ogg echoed a number 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 legal professional,” Ogg mentioned 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 expenses in opposition to the 2 suspects, who’re being held in jail on $10m bonds.
A number of research, nonetheless, have proven immigrants on the whole 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 completely different classes of crimes, from 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 Social gathering, accusing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of permitting “open borders”.
Irregular migration throughout the US-Mexico border did attain a document excessive beneath Biden’s presidency, however it 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 response to a press release that month from US Clients and Border Safety, the variety of border patrol apprehensions was “the bottom it has been” because the 2020 fiscal 12 months.
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 purposes if irregular border crossings surpassed 2,500 individuals per day.
Others included penalties like a five-year ban on reentry and doable legal prosecution.
Nonetheless, 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 provides the federal authorities the ability to deport foreigners throughout instances of battle.
“We are going to start the biggest 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 is not going to 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 enterprise 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 can be alive in the present day if Kamala had carried out her job,” Trump posted on his social media account earlier this 12 months.
