The shooting death of Kristie Thibodeaux first made headlines because it happened in the French Quarter — New Orleans’ oldest neighborhood and a place where residents of historic homes and owners of tourist-dependent restaurants and clubs have long worried about recurring violent crimes.
Then came the news that one of the three suspects in the armed robbery and shooting of the 43-year-old tour guide was a young man with an arrest record and a non-working ankle monitor. And then the revelation that another was a 19-year-old Honduran citizen who had been in the country illegally since at least 2019.
“This man should never have been in Louisiana. That’s enough,” Governor Jeff Landrya Republican, said on X shortly after news of the suspect’s immigration status became public.
Republicans in Louisiana tried to blame President Joe Biden and its immigration policiesbut the Honduran accused in the case was first detained by US immigration authorities at the Texas border when donald trump was president. And the case exposed other flaws in the judicial system beyond border politics.
The broken ankle monitor allowed the 15-year-old to take to the streets, and that failure led to bipartisan calls for reform of the state’s juvenile court system. Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, ordered an investigation into the juvenile court’s ankle monitoring contracts.
One suspect was a 17-year-old, and the murder occurred at a time when US cities are facing problems with underage offenders, with easy access to weapons, committing violence and robberies.
Thibodeaux was shot to death while sitting in her car on the morning of June 30 in the French Quarter. Police say the suspects in her death carried out a series of robberies.
Brian Cain, owner of the tourism company Crawl New Orleans, said Thibodeaux was one of his longest-serving employees — a vivacious, caring colleague who was loved by his co-workers and the tourists he served.
As the Republican National Convention approaches, crimes committed by immigrants have fueled the Trump’s political rhetoric. Trump has argued that the influx of immigrants is causing a rise in crime in the US, even though statistics show that violent crime is declining.
Conservatives point to other recent killings in Texas and Georgia to make their case on border failures during the Biden administration. In February, Laken Hope Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was attacked and killed near running tracks on the University of Georgia campus. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who, according to immigration authorities, entered the US illegally in 2022 and was allowed to remain. In Houston, a 12-year-old boy Jocelyn Nungaray was strangled and found in a creek last month, and authorities have charged two Venezuelan men who entered the country illegally.
FBI statistics do not separate crimes by the immigration status of the perpetrator, nor is there any evidence of an increase in crimes perpetrated by migrants, either along the US-Mexico border or in cities experiencing the largest influx of migrants. , like New York. Studies have found that people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to be arrested for violent, drug-related, and property crimes.
Immigration officials in New Orleans say it is unclear when, where or how Joshua Aviala-Bonifacio entered the country. He is a Honduran citizen and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office says he was first encountered by Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Texas, when he was 15 years old, in May 2019.
He was released under a “recognizance order” on May 14, 2019, according to ICE. He later ended up in the New Orleans area, where he has an arrest record.
“On multiple occasions, Bonifacio has been arrested for theft and contributing to the delinquency of minors,” an ICE statement said. “Since February 2024, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office has cited Bonifacio for five local violations.”
Now, he faces a murder charge in Thibodeaux’s death.
Cain sees several reasons to be dissatisfied with state, local and federal agencies and the circumstances that led the suspects to the streets.
“If he is in the country illegally, then he should not be here. But the most important thing is how the local system failed over and over again, not only letting him out on the street, but also failing to detect that he was, in fact, here illegally.”
