By Mark Anderson
According to the police of Edna, Texas, a community of about 6,000 people located between Corpus Christi and Houston, a 16-year-old high school cheerleader was murdered by a young illegal alien on Dec. 5. The girl’s mother found the lifeless body of Lizbeth Medina in the bathtub of their apartment. Reportedly, Lizbeth failed to meet up with her fellow cheerleaders at a Christmas parade.
Click the Link Below to Listen to the Audio of this Article
Upon discovering the body, the mother contacted the authorities and first responders rushed to the Cottonwood Apartments. Despite their best efforts to revive the high school junior, she was declared dead at the scene. Soon thereafter, the police announced they’d arrested an “undocumented male” as the prime murder suspect.
“On Saturday, Dec. 9, with the help of the community, friends, and family, [the] Edna Police Department, in conjunction with the Texas Rangers, were able to apprehend the person responsible for the death of Lizbeth Medina,” Police Chief Rick Boone told reporters. “With countless hours put into this investigation, we were able to locate an undocumented male subject, identified as Rafael Govea Romero, in the city of Schulenburg.”
Romero has been arrested for capital murder and was transported to the Jackson County Jail, according to Boone.
Meanwhile, a vigilant Texas-focused news and commentary website, “Current Revolt,” while taking Lizbeth’s death into account, is expressing strong skepticism of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” border-security plan, seeing it largely as marketing over substance. Tucker Carlson, notably, agrees. The former Fox News anchor spoke at a recent rally where he openly called Abbott a “liar and betrayer.” He believes Abbott’s donors simply won’t tolerate serious moves by Texas to deploy its National Guard in high enough numbers to effectively repel all the invaders.
Website “Current Revolt” remarked about Romero:
He’s documented now—the documentation says he killed someone. … These sorts of things will continue to happen while Republicans in Texas continue to campaign [while] telling us how they’ve secured the border, ended sanctuary cities, and made our towns safe.
Romero was taken to jail just hours after a vigil in Lizbeth’s honor was held on the courthouse lawn. She was known to her friends and family as “Liz” or “Lizzo” and was “a shining beacon of contagious happiness” who moved to Edna with her mother just a year and a half ago, the local paper noted. Lizbeth was laid to rest Dec. 12 in Grand Island, Neb., where most of her family resides.
STUNNING STATS
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) noted that, according to federal DHS status indicators, “over 422,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and Nov. 30, 2023, of which over 294,000 were classified as illegal aliens by DHS.”
Between June 1, 2011, and Nov. 30, 2023, these 294,000 illegal aliens were charged with more than 504,000 criminal offenses which included arrests for 937 homicide charges; along with 63,357 assault charges; 9,176 burglary charges; 59,517 drug charges; 1,122 kidnapping charges; 25,049 theft charges; 39,339 obstructing police charges; 2,870 robbery charges; 6,365 sexual assault charges; 7,367 sexual offense charges; and 6,112 weapon charges.
“DPS criminal history records reflect those criminal charges have thus far resulted in over 185,000 convictions including 462 homicide convictions; 23,131 assault convictions; 4,608 burglary convictions; 24,902 drug convictions; 320 kidnapping convictions; 9,573 theft convictions; 15,565 obstructing police convictions; 1,615 robbery convictions; 3,018 sexual assault convictions; 3,381 sexual offense convictions; and 2,011 weapon convictions,” DPS added.
These are just the criminal illegals who’ve been caught and arrested. And while the DPS and other sources note that legal immigrants and native Texans commit similar crimes on a similar scale, these illegals “are not supposed to be here” in the first place. Thus, all these crimes are largely preventable.
And with Texas Lives Matter spokesman Wyatt Watson having witnessed over 23,000 illegals, virtually all young men in their prime, flooding over the border over a week’s time in early December near Quemado, Texas—even as overwhelmed Border Patrol agents were often hostile toward Watson and his fellow citizen border scouts—the potential for more Edna-like events is certainly higher than ever.
The illegal criminal element is, at times, a well-oiled machine. A retired Hidalgo County, Texas union truck driver in April 2023 had his top-of-the-line 2017 Ford F-350 pickup, which starts with a push-button instead of a physical key, quietly stolen from a well-lit Holiday Inn parking lot in San Antonio during the night. The truck was found near Pleasanton about 30 days later. Police determined that it had been used by illegals to transport contraband and perhaps people. The truck’s rear seats had been ripped out and $5,000 worth of tools kept in the truck were stolen.
The truck owner, Greg, who preferred not to use his last name, didn’t even receive the full value of the loss from his insurance claim, which fell short by about $30,000. Most notably, he told AFP, “The thieves used a sophisticated digital device to hack into the truck’s computer; they extracted the data to open the locked door and then start it.”
According to hotel camera footage, this whole operation lasted 3-4 minutes.
“San Antonio police say there are 40 or 50 vehicle thefts per day in the city,” Greg added, while understanding that a sizable portion of those involve illegal aliens.
Mark Anderson is a roving writer for AFP. He invites your thoughtful comments and story ideas at [email protected]. Mark’s radio show “Stop the Presses!” runs at www.republicbroadcasting.org, Wednesdays from 2 to 3 p.m. EDT.
