Twenty-Three Dead Families and the Drunk Drivers We Keep Letting Back In

Twenty-three families in the Houston area are missing someone at the dinner table tonight. Not because of some unavoidable accident or twist of fate, but because criminal illegal aliens with multiple drunk driving convictions kept getting behind the wheel. And kept killing people.

ICE’s Houston field office just wrapped up a year of what they’re calling aggressive enforcement, and the numbers should make your blood boil. Since President Trump’s second term began just over a year ago, ERO officers arrested 243 criminal aliens convicted of three or more DWI incidents. These aren’t misdemeanors we’re talking about. These are felony convictions. Twenty-one of these individuals were convicted of intoxication manslaughter, which is a fancy legal term for killing someone while driving drunk.

Gabriel Martinez, the acting field office director, put it plainly. “At least 23 families will wake up tomorrow without a loved one.” He’s not wrong to call this trend reckless and tragic, though honestly those words feel inadequate.

Here’s what really happened recently. ICE placed detainers on two Mexican nationals arrested for intoxication manslaughter in Harris County. Enrique Acevedo Barocio is 27. Manuel Neri Mendoza is 37 and already had two prior DWI convictions. But Mendoza’s case gets worse, if you can imagine. He allegedly tried to flee the scene after his crash, leaving a three-year-old child alone in a wrecked vehicle with their deceased mother.

Think about that for a second. A toddler sitting next to their dead mother while the drunk driver who killed her runs away. This is the reality that open border advocates never want to discuss at their policy conferences.

Martinez explained something that should surprise exactly no one. Mendoza’s attempt to flee isn’t unique. ICE Houston arrested nearly 100 criminal aliens this past year who fled accident scenes and were charged with failure to stop and render aid. “It has become extremely common for criminal illegal aliens to flee from ICE and other law enforcement,” Martinez said. He blames elected officials who’ve spent years demonizing immigration officers and essentially coaching aliens on how to evade arrest.

You can’t separate these tragedies from the broader immigration debate, no matter how hard some people try. When we refuse to enforce immigration law at the border, when we create sanctuary policies that shield criminals from federal authorities, when we treat ICE agents like the villains instead of the people cleaning up the mess, this is what we get. Dead Americans and criminals who keep reoffending because there are no real consequences.

The Houston operation in October that Breitbart covered tells you everything you need to know about how bad this has gotten. ERO officers conducted their first-ever nighttime targeted enforcement operation in high-crime areas. They arrested approximately 25 illegal aliens before torrential rains forced them to stop early. One of those arrested was actively driving under the influence when officers found him. Beer cans literally spilled onto the driveway as they took him into custody. He appeared highly intoxicated, according to officials on scene.

Among those arrested throughout the year was Samuel Valenzuela-Martinez, a 55-year-old who’d been deported five times. Five times. He had three prior DWI convictions and one hit-and-run conviction. ICE finally caught up with him again in July.

This isn’t about immigration broadly or some abstract policy debate. This is about repeat criminal offenders who’ve already proven they don’t respect our laws, our sovereignty, or apparently human life. After illegally entering the country once, they stayed. After getting convicted of drunk driving once, they drove drunk again. After getting deported, they came back. The pattern repeats until someone dies.

Martinez framed it correctly when he said these criminals “repeatedly put the lives of innocent Americans in jeopardy by getting behind the wheel intoxicated.” But the question nobody in Washington wants to answer is this: how many more families have to lose someone before we actually secure the border and enforce immigration law consistently?

Every single one of these 23 deaths was preventable. Not in some theoretical sense, but actually preventable through basic immigration enforcement. If we’d stopped these individuals at the border, if we’d removed them after their first conviction, if we’d kept them out after deportation, those 23 people would still be alive. Their kids would still have parents. Their parents would still have children.

The data from Houston represents just one city in one state. Multiply this across the country and you’re looking at hundreds, maybe thousands, of preventable deaths caused by illegal aliens with criminal records who shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

Some will call this rhetoric divisive or inflammatory. Fine. But what do you call leaving a three-year-old alone with their dead mother? What do you call someone who drives drunk three, four, five times and keeps getting chances to do it again? What do you call a system that allows someone to be deported five times and still come back to rack up more convictions?

The families of those 23 victims don’t need another think piece about comprehensive immigration reform. They need their loved ones back. And since that’s impossible, maybe we could at least have the decency to enforce the laws already on the books so other families don’t join their ranks.