Not a victimless crime: Angel Families reshape the narrative about illegal immigration

Mary Ann Mendoza went to bed on Mother’s Day in 2014 not knowing her nightmare was about to begin.

She awoke to a phone call that something had happened to her son. She would learn that Brandon Mendoza had finished his shift as a police officer in Mesa, Arizona, and was driving home when he was smashed head-on by a car driven by an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk and had a lengthy record of mayhem.

That was when Ms. Mendoza joined the ranks of what would become known as Angel Moms, or women who have lost children to illegal immigrant crime.

She would go on to found Angel Families for all victims.

Over the past decade, these women have provided a compelling voice in the debate over immigration policy and, with their powerful stories of loss, offered an alternative perspective to the tearjerker stories of hardworking illegal immigrant farmworkers, housecleaners or schoolchildren.

Ms. Mendoza reveals her story in a new video for The American Border Story project, which seeks to highlight the “untold stories” of the immigration debate.

“Think about losing one of your children in the way that I did. Your child is just ripped out of your life in the blink of an eye,” she said. “I’m warning you, it can happen to any of you. There are still a lot of violent illegal criminals in our country.”

Nicole Kiprilov, executive director of the Border Story project, called the video a “warning every American needs to hear.”

“This video is one of the most raw and heartbreaking testimonies we’ve captured: a mother who lost her son because politicians refused to secure the border,” Ms. Kiprilov said.

American media hadn’t told much about stories like Ms. Mendoza’s for a long time.

She said a rape or slaying blamed on an illegal immigrant might make a splash in local news but rarely broke into the national news cycle, nor did it resonate with Washington movers and shakers.

At one point early in her efforts, she and fellow Angel families sent a letter asking President Obama for his attention. They received a canned response.

They were having lunch in the District of Columbia in the spring of 2015 when they found out first lady Michelle Obama was meeting with illegal immigrant teachers who had been granted tentative status under the DACA, or Deferred Action, program.

“We were a block from the White House, feeling we don’t even matter to these people,” Ms. Mendoza told The Washington Times.

Ms. Mendoza said she has generally received good treatment from the media when she tells her story, though some members of Congress have offered less than she had hoped.

She bristled at the signs outside some lawmakers’ doors on Capitol Hill proclaiming “Dreamers welcome,” a reference to DACA recipients.

“Guess what, our children were dreamers too. They were American dreams, and their lives got cut short,” she said. “Can you imagine how it makes us feel when we have Democratic representatives who slam the door in our faces, to see them fight harder for people who are illegally present in our country, to see them fight to get these kids into college.”

Dreamers used to be the chief staple of immigration news coverage, with young illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children pleading for a share of the American dream.

Ms. Mendoza said they have it wrong.

“You’re not dreamers, you’re not just handed something in this country because you’re present,” she said. “Our children were born here. They were raised here. They belong here.”

Her point of view got a boost starting in 2015 with the emergence of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and with the headline-grabbing death of Kate Steinle.

The 32-year-old woman was killed in 2015 while walking on the San Francisco waterfront with her father. The bullet came from a gun fired by an illegal immigrant who had been protected by the city’s sanctuary policies.

President Biden’s border chaos added many more high-profile victims and their families.

They include Kayla Hamilton, 20, strangled by an illegal immigrant caught and released despite MS-13 ties in El Salvador; Jocelyn Nungaray, 12, who was sexually assaulted and killed, with two Venezuelan illegal immigrants charged with her slaying; and Laken Riley, 22, slain by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant caught and released by the Biden administration and shielded by New York’s sanctuary policies.

Their mothers have joined Ms. Mendoza as fixtures in the immigration debate and appearances on Capitol Hill, where they have become indispensable voices.

“If there is anything that makes members of Congress squirm, it’s having to look family members in the eye and say, ‘I’m not going to do anything to prevent someone else’s loved one from getting killed like your family member did,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at the Immigration Accountability Project and a veteran of Washington’s immigration battles.

The Trump administration has recognized the power of the victims’ voices.

On Mother’s Day this year, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement honoring Tammy Nobles, mother of Hamilton, and commemorating “all the mothers who lost loved ones to illegal alien crime.”

Indeed, the first bill Mr. Trump signed into law in his second term was the Laken Riley Act, which orders Homeland Security to detain and try to deport illegal immigrants with lower-level criminal records, such as shoplifting.

It also includes a provision known as Sarah’s Law, named after Sarah Root, a 21-year-old  killed in 2016 in a crash that authorities have blamed on an illegal immigrant driving drunk. The accused, Eswin Mejia, posted bond and quickly fled the country. He remained free for nine years until the Trump Justice Department extradited him in March.

“There’s no question that these families, their willingness to tell their stories and to share their hearts with America and with Congress has made a huge difference,” Ms. Jenks said.

The debate over how much crime is caused by illegal immigrants has raged for years. Some studies suggest their crime rate is higher than that of the native-born, and others suggest it is lower.

Ms. Mendoza said she sides with those who say their crime rates are higher, but she posited a deeper truth: that if the government were doing its job, the perpetrators wouldn’t have been in the U.S. in the first place.

“We have enough crime in the United States as it is. We don’t need to be importing crime,” Ms. Mendoza said.