Victims: The Nun, The Teen

Failure by federal law enforcement agencies to remove criminal aliens from our midst places all Americans at risk. Two cases from the summer of 2010 highlight this outrageous situation.

On August 7th, in Houston, Texas, Shatavia Anderson, 14, was walking home when she was confronted by Melvin Alvarado, 22, a twice-deported illegal alien from El Salvador, and his partner Jonathan Lopez-Torres, 18, a native of Honduras, previously arrested for auto theft. When she attempted to run away, Alvarado fatally shot her in the back. According to police, the two Central American thugs saw Shatavia as an easy "target of opportunity" for armed robbery. After murdering the girl, they took her purse containing a few dollars and her cell phone. Shatavia was killed less than 100 yards from her family's apartment.

Alvarado was in the country illegally, having been deported in April 2008 and again in May 2009. But with a virtually unprotected border, he was able to walk right back into the U.S. and resume his life of crime. As Shatavia's uncle, Joe Lambert, remarked, "What I'm trying to figure out is how they [criminal aliens] started coming over here and why they can do whatever they want. What [the government] is doing is giving them the green light, tellin' them, 'Hey, you can come over here and do what you want.'"

On August 8th, Benedictine Sister Denise Mosier, 66, was killed when a drunk Bolivian illegal alien spun out of control while driving in Prince William County, Virginia and crashed his Subaru head-on into the nun's Toyota. The suspect, Carlos Martinelly Montano, 23, has a long list of arrests and citations, including two prior DUI convictions. He has used multiple aliases and fake Social Security numbers. He should have been deported years ago, but immigration authorities released him pending further proceedings. This gave Montano the opportunity to get drunk and hit the road again - this time with fatal consequences.

Prince William Commonwealth's attorney Paul Ebert was angry at this turn of events: "He's thumbed his nose at the laws of Virginia for years. He continued to drive, even though his privilege had been revoked... and he continued to drive drunk, which led to this horrible, horrible situation." Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) noted, "A life could have been saved had ICE [Immigration & Customs Enforcement] just simply done their job to begin with [by deporting Montano after his earlier convictions]... The U.S. government is literally putting lives at risk." Unless law enforcement agencies fulfill their responsibility to protect U.S. citizens from criminal aliens, there will be more victims of their reckless and ruthless behavior.