Court Banned Mention of Jared Vargas Killer’s Illegal Alien Status in Trial

During the trial that ultimately convicted the illegal alien who murdered 20-year-old Jared Vargas, the man’s immigration status was banned from being mentioned in court.

As Breitbart News reported, 20-year-old illegal alien Ernesto Esquivel-Garcia from Mexico was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Jared Vargas in June 2018 after being convicted of first-degree murder in August.

A report by the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman reveals that Judge Kevin O’Connell and prosecutors for Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales’ office conceded before trial that Esquivel-Garcia’s illegal alien status would not be mentioned to the jury:

The problem is that a key element of Vargas’s murder was hermetically excluded from the trial: That murderer Ernesto Esquivel-Garcia was a criminal illegal immigrant from Mexico who could have been deported several times before he killed Vargas, but wasn’t. [Emphasis added]

Before the trial started last month, the defendant’s legal team filed a motion to exclude any “reference to, or insinuation concerning the status or nature of Ernesto Esquivel-Garcia’s immigration or citizenship status” due to its potential “harmful effect” and its “highly prejudicial content.” [Emphasis added]

As Bensman notes, Gonzales received about $1 million in campaign cash from billionaire George Soros during his run for District Attorney in 2018.

“In our situation, when we were trying to put all of this together, we met obstacles and roadblocks one after another,” Jared’s aunt, Cristin Vargas, told Bensman. “We still don’t know why this happened to Jared.”

At the time of Jared’s murder, Esquivel-Garcia had already been twice released from police and federal custody back into the U.S. and was only given a voluntary deportation order despite having a criminal record.

In March 2017, the illegal alien was arrested for drunk driving and was eventually turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Though he was placed into deportation proceedings, an immigration judge allowed him to post bond, and he was released back into the interior of the country.

In May 2018, a month before Vargas was murdered, Esquivel-Garcia was again put into ICE custody and local police custody but was able to post bond and be released back into the U.S. with only the promise that he would self-deport.

“We don’t understand why he was able to get arrested and get released and get arrested and then get released,” Cristin told Bensman. “Based on our understanding of the law he should have been deported before all this happened.”

Vargas, a cybersecurity student at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was found murdered by Esquivel-Garcia on June 18, 2018, when firefighters arrived at the scene of an apartment set ablaze.

Prosecutors said the illegal alien had brutally strangled and stabbed Vargas to death before setting his body on fire in the apartment complex. Throughout the trial, Esquivel-Garcia and his attorneys had used a defense and smear against Vargas to justify the murder, claiming that the illegal alien killed Vargas in self-defense because he believed that he was under threat of being sexually assaulted.

Jared Vargas leaves behind his twin brother, in college, and a little sister, in high school, as well as his parents and countless loved ones and friends. A GoFundMe page has been set up in his honor to help his twin brother and little sister in their schooling.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.