The mother of murder victim Jocelyn Nungaray said her 12-year-old daughter would still be alive if a newly introduced Republican bill had been in effect last month.
“In the wake of so much grief, Jocelyn gives me the strength to be her voice and demand justice,” said Alexis Nungaray, Jocelyn’s mother, in a statement from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). “Senator Ted Cruz’s Justice for Jocelyn Act would have prevented Jocelyn’s death. It would have prevented her two murderers from being on the street and it would have meant that Jocelyn would be here with us today.”
Republican lawmakers from Texas are pushing a new bill that would improve how federal authorities track illegal immigrants once they are released from the southern border into the United States.
Cruz and Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) on Thursday introduced the Justice for Jocelyn Act, legislation that is in response to the rape and murder of Nungaray, whose suspected murderers were illegal immigrants.
Suspects Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, were arrested in late June for the murder of the Houston girl.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to the Washington Examiner that both entered the country illegally earlier this spring and were allowed to remain in the U.S. pending immigration court proceedings, which can take several years to unfold.
“Jocelyn Nungaray’s horrific death was entirely preventable,” Cruz said in a statement. “The illegal aliens charged with murdering her should have been held in ICE custody, but they were allowed into the U.S. despite the availability of thousands of open detention center beds.”
Nungaray was found deceased early in the morning on June 16. Court records said Nungaray had snuck out of her home late the previous night and gone to 7-Eleven, where she encountered the two suspects after they had partied at a local restaurant, according to local news outlet KPRC.
The two are alleged to have lured her to a private area where they raped and then strangled her before throwing her body into a creek to get rid of DNA evidence. One suspect reportedly searched how to get out of the U.S. before police arrested them.
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One suspect had an ankle monitor that he had been fitted with by ICE at the time of his release at the border. The other had also been fitted with an ankle monitor but was allowed to take it off three weeks after being released.
The Cruz-Nehls bill would require that every ICE detention bed be filled so as not to allow illegal immigrants who pose some concern to be allowed to remain in the U.S. It would also require all illegal immigrants monitored outside of detention to be tracked through a GPS device with no chance of an early removal of the device.