The Democrat district attorney in Harris County, Texas, said the two illegal aliens accused of killing 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray were freed with ankle monitors upon arrival in Texas.
Kim Ogg said Thursday the pair should never have been released when they crossed into El Paso, “but we have a broken system and Jocelyn’s death resulted. And it’s just hard when you know something could have been prevented like a child’s death,” the New York Post reported.
However, state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-TX) said, “Harris County has become a sanctuary for criminals, and the blame is not just on the Biden administration, but it’s on the DA’s office,” Fox News reported Monday.
He also laid blame at the feet of criminal court judges “who have let the world know that Harris County is a safe place for criminals, illegal or legal or otherwise.”
According to the Post, the men were given the GPS trackers when they crossed the border.
The pair have been charged with murdering Nungaray, but they are not yet eligible for the death penalty, the district attorney’s office said in June, according to Breitbart News:
Venezuelan illegal aliens 22-year-old Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel and 26-year-old Franklin Pena — both released into the United States from the southern border — were arrested and charged with murdering Jocelyn Nungaray in the early morning of June 17.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg (D) has since released grizzly details of Jocelyn’s murder, explaining that the girl’s body was found in a creek near a bridge, nude from the waist down, with her hands and feet bound together and cuts all over her backside.
An autopsy report listed strangulation as Jocelyn’s cause of death.
The Post noted that days after the girl was killed on June 17, one of the suspects cut off his ankle monitor. while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed the other man from the monitoring program because he had no known criminal history.
Ogg said ankle monitors give the public a “false sense of security” adding that she hopes to pursue the death penalty in the case, but that depends on Texas law, which requires additional evidence because of Nungaray’s age.
“Ogg also said the case could change if there’s evidence the two had rap sheets in Venezuela, but said that since the country is uncooperative with US authorities, it is not likely much will be revealed,” the Post article said.
However, Breitbart News’s John Binder reported,
On Monday [July 1], the Harris County District Attorney’s Office unveiled the findings from an examination of Jocelyn’s body conducted by the Houston Forensic Science Center. The findings confirm that Jocelyn was sexually assaulted before her murder.
The murder charges alone against Martinez-Rangel and Pena did not make them eligible for the death penalty, but the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has said a sexual assault charge added to each suspect could change that and require them to be held without bail.
Community members and loved ones attended the girl’s funeral on Thursday, according to KHOU:
In June, White House statements on the deaths of Nungaray and a mother in Maryland named Rachel Morin failed to mention that the suspects in both cases are illegal aliens. Critics used the statements as an opportunity to blast Joe Biden’s disastrous border policies, which have hurt numerous citizens, according to Breitbart News.
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