The killing of a 12-year-old Houston girl, found last week in the shallow water of a city drainage ditch after having been strangled, was already a horrific crime.
“It doesn’t get any worse,” the city’s mayor, John Whitmire, said.
Then investigators arrested two recent Venezuelan migrants and charged them with killing the girl, Jocelyn Nungaray.
The second of the two appeared in court on Tuesday; both were being held on a $10 million bond.
Suddenly the killing, which had ripped apart a Houston family, became the latest flashpoint in the debate over immigration, seized on by Republicans and immigration opponents who drew a direct line between the crime and President Biden’s policies at the border.
“Texas is not threatened by what is happening at the border,” said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic political organization in Texas. “It’s all a performance for them,” he said of the comments from Mr. Abbott and other Republicans about the case in Houston. “These guys don’t care about this 12-year-old or any 12-year-old. If this young woman were raped, they would force her to endure the pregnancy and bear the child of the rapist.”
The two men in the recent Houston case, accused of killing the 12-year-old girl and leaving her bound and without pants in a drainage ditch, were identified as Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Pena, 26, according to court filings.
They were arrested last week at an apartment where they were both staying in Houston, the city’s acting police chief, Larry Satterwhite, said at a news conference.
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No mother should ever have to experience what this poor woman is going through.
Joe Biden has failed to protect families and children from illegal immigration long enough.
It's time to get Trump back in office so we can have safe, rational and secure immigration policy.
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@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
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