Last week, we reported on the murder of Wake County, NC, sheriff’s K9 deputy Ned Byrd. Deputy Byrd was shot and killed on August 12, and Mexican brothers Alder Alfonso Marin Sotelo, 25, and Arturo Marin Sotelo, 29, have been charged with the crime. A third brother, Rolando Marin Sotelo, 18, has been charged so far with criminal possession of ammunition. Alder and Arturo face a possible death penalty if convicted.
Not surprisingly, all the Sotelo brothers are in this country illegally, and their history provides an eye-opening glance at not just how broken our border security has become but also the relative lack of interest being shown in prosecuting violent offenders.
Arturo, for example, was caught in 2010 attempting to cross the border. He was stopped and sent back on that occasion but later, at an unknown date and place and thus as a got-away, he returned. Now, in addition to the murder charge, he has also been charged with felonious “possession of a firearm by an illegal alien,” a charge arising from a traffic stop last year.
Alder, the other brother charged with the murder of Deputy Byrd, was cited in nearby Chapel Hill in 2021, for illegal possession of a firearm. When he failed to appear twice, unbelievably authorities dropped the case.
Brother Rolando was first caught in Arizona in 2019. He was deported at that time, but inexplicably, when he returned just two months later 1,000 miles to the east at an official border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, he was allowed to enter under “humanitarian parole.”
The jurisdictions in which these crimes took place–Wake and Orange Counties, NC–are leftist-run, sanctuary counties. There is no indication that ICE was ever notified when any of the Sotelos came to the attention of local law enforcement. Each brother was apparently able to come and go from Mexico with impunity. As a consequence, Deputy Byrd, 48, a 13-year veteran of the Wake County Sheriff’s Department, is dead. His K9 partner, Sasha, who was not injured, is being re-assigned.
For more, see the Washington Times.