Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry blamed the killing of a French Quarter tour guide on porous security at the U.S. border with Mexico, citing reports Wednesday that named a suspect in the slaying as an immigrant from Honduras.
"This man should have never been in Louisiana. Enough is enough," Landry, a Republican, said on X, formerly Twitter. "We must close our borders and keep our communities safe!"
Landry was commenting on reports that identified Joshua Bonifacio-Avila, a 19-year-old suspect in Sunday's slaying of tour guide Kristie Thibodeaux, as a Honduran citizen who allegedly entered the U.S. illegally.
His remarks added to a chorus of Republican officials and political candidates who have highlighted crimes allegedly committed by immigrants, even as new research shows migrants break the law much less often than U.S.-born citizens. They have sought to blame President Joe Biden — who moved to repeal some Trump-era border policies — for creating a surge in illegal immigration.
Spotlighting crimes committed by noncitizens "does nothing but make people scared when the vast majority of immigrants want to live law-abiding lives, go to church and spend time with their families," said Jeremy Jong, a New Orleans-based immigration attorney for the advocacy organization Al Otro Lado.
Bonifacio-Avila is accused of firing the shots that killed Thibodeaux, who worked as a French Quarter tour guide, while she sat in her car in the 700 block of St. Peter Street Sunday morning.
A statement provided by ICE officials said Bonifacio-Avila "entered the U.S. illegally on an unknown date at an unknown location without being admitted, paroled, or inspected by an immigration officer."
Immigration politics
According to an ICE spokesperson, Bonifacio-Avila had an "encounter" with U.S. Border Patrol agents near Hidalgo, Texas, in May 2019, when Donald Trump was president. Bonifacio-Avila, then 14, lacked the documents needed to legally enter the U.S. and was released pending an immigration hearing, the spokesperson said.
He was twice arrested by police in Kenner over the past year leading up to Thibodeaux's slaying, according to local and federal law enforcement officials. Kenner officers booked him in October for misdemeanor theft and again in February on misdemeanor theft and contributing to delinquency of juveniles.
It wasn't immediately clear Wednesday whether Bonifacio-Avila is represented by an immigration attorney. The Orleans Parish Public Defender's office, which is representing Bonifacio-Avila and two co-defendants, declined to comment on the pending case in line with agency policy.
Landry has used immigration as a political cudgel tracing to his days as state Attorney General. In 2016, he told Congress that a fire chief killed in a wreck in LaPlace allegedly caused by an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally would “absolutely” be alive but for what he called the "sanctuary city" policies of cities like New Orleans.
In one of his first acts as governor, he sent Louisiana National Guard soldiers to the Texas-Mexico border amid a clash between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Biden over federal policy governing the country's overwhelmed immigration system, which Republicans argue is too lax toward people attempting to enter the country.
Crime rates
Republicans including Landry have sought to blame the number of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. for rising crime rates in recent years amid a sharp increase in the number of people seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But despite the ongoing problems at the border, crime rates have been falling steeply across the country in the last year.
Moreover, a 2023 study by economist Ran Abramitzky for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that between 1960 and 2020, migrants were 60% less likely to be incarcerated than people born inside the U.S. A separate analysis of state-level data in Texas by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute found that migrants in the U.S. without authorization were 37% less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born residents.
Apprehensions of migrants from Central America and elsewhere reached new heights along the U.S.-Mexico border late last year amid economic strife, trafficking, gang-related attacks and other social factors in countries including Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and Venezuela.
At a July 2 bond hearing where Orleans Parish magistrate commissioner Joyce Sallah set bond for Bonifacio-Avila and co-defendant Jerben Albarec at $1.1 million apiece, both defendants required a Spanish translator. They were arrested along with a 15-year-old juvenile. Asked about the immigration status of Bonifacio-Avila's codefendants, ICE did not immediately respond.
Police documents say that Albarec and the juvenile told investigators they were in a car in the French Quarter with Bonifacio-Avila at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Police say they admitted to robbing three men, then stopping their car at the corner of St. Peter and Royal streets.
Albarec and the younger suspect told police that Bonifacio-Avila exited the car and fired the fatal shots at Thibodeaux, documents said.
On Tuesday, state Attorney General Liz Murrill launched a probe into an ankle monitoring program that had been tasked with overseeing the 15-year-old defendant in the case.
Staff writers Missy Wilkinson, Michelle Hunter and Gabriella Killett contributed to this report.
