Testimony: Protect us from ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – As the daughter of a man born in Mexico, April Aguirre has strong feelings about the contribution of immigrants to American society.

“I want you to know immigration is good, I am living proof of that. My parents don’t even have a speeding ticket. That is the type of migrants we want,” she says.

But as a Houston-area crime victims advocate, Aguirre says the bad are coming in with the good. On Tuesday, she testified before the House Judiciary Committee about her work with families whose loved ones have been killed by men who should have never been allowed to enter the U.S.

“I have personally worked three cases in Houston where little girls were targeted because they were young, they were beautiful, they were underaged and they were vulnerable,” Aguirre said.

One involved a migrant released from immigration custody in El Paso after securing a U.S. sponsor. The man allegedly raped and strangled an 11-year-old girl – also the daughter of a migrant – living in his apartment complex.

Aguirre described a knock on the door, a child asking if it was her father who forgot something after leaving for work, and a door chain not being enough to prevent last year’s heinous crime in the Houston suburb of Pasadena, Texas.

“We have to have a real system to identify these criminals who are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Not everybody is the same and you have to identify these monsters because, like my dad says, they’re giving migrants such a bad name,” she said.

Aguirre’s testimony came at a hearing in Washington, D.C., titled “The Biden-Harris border crisis: Victims’ perspectives.”

House Judiciary Ranking Member U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, alluded to the political nature of the proceedings.

“Unfortunately, instead of working in a bipartisan fashion to find meaningful solutions to a broken immigration system, we are sitting in yet one more partisan hearing designed to divide us and to score political points before an election,” Nadler said.

Still, Nadler expressed his condolences to families like those of Alexis Nungaray, whose 12-year-old daughter Jocelyn also allegedly was murdered allegedly by two men who made an illegal entry into the United States in El Paso but were released by immigration authorities.

“She was going to the corner store to get a soda; she was preyed on by two illegal Venezuelan immigrants. They saw an innocent young girl and made her a target for their horrendous actions,” Nungaray said.

She said her “heart sank” when she saw police tape last June around an area in the immediacy of her daughter’s cellphone location. “She was strangled, had no clothing form the waist down, her arms and ankles were tied, and thrown in a body of water under a bridge like she was nothing but garbage,” Nungaray said.

The two alleged perpetrators have been charged with capital murder in Harris County, Texas.

Another witness, Melissa Lopez, executive director of Estrella del Paso migrant and refugee services nonprofit in El Paso, told the committee most migrants who come to the United States make positive contributions to this society.

And she emphasized how it is Americans who commit most crimes.

She spoke about a white male from the Dallas area who drove 10 hours to El Paso to kill Hispanics under the belief that all immigrants are bad. Patrick Wood Crusius was convicted in U.S. federal court for hate crimes in connection with the death of 23 people – most of them American citizens – in the Aug. 3, 2019, Walmart massacre.

“We treat people with the dignity they deserve because, at the end of the day, we all are human beings,” Lopez said.

Aguirre acknowledged at the hearing that “citizens kill people, too.” But she pointed at the witnesses who came to tell the stories of losing a loved one to a migrant.

“All of them are migrants that caused this and it’s the failure of our policies for not checking them,” Aguirre said, calling for stricter vetting of those who try to enter the United States. “We owe it to the immigrants who are getting away from these (Latin American) communities and we owe it to our citizens to offer them a safe society.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to BorderReport.