Grieving Angel Mom Continues to Pay a High Price for Illegal Immigration

 Guest Opinion by Terri LaPoint, Investigative Journalist

Kathy Hall is going to a parole hearing next week for her daughter’s killer to try to keep him in prison. Again. Illegal immigrant Sergio Rodriguez is serving only a 17-year prison sentence for violently killing 18-year old Hailey King and leaving 20-year old David Gutierrez maimed and left without his legs. Somehow Rodriguez was eligible for parole after a year and a half.

Angel Families – those who have lost a loved one due to the actions of someone in the country illegally – continue to pay a high cost for lax border policies of previous administrations. The Trump administration has accomplished a lot in terms of border security, passing good laws like the Laken Riley Act – named for the Georgia nursing student brutally murdered by an illegal who should not have been on the streets.

However, the fight is far from over. More than just about anyone else, Angel Families recognize the problems America still faces after decades of people flooding illegally across porous borders. Murders, rapes, trafficking, thefts, and hit-and-runs are still being committed by people who remain in our country illegally.

The American Border Story recently did a video piece on Kathy Hall’s story as she steels herself for the upcoming parole hearing, set in Little Rock, Arkansas, for August 19. Fox News and the Daily Mail picked up the story.

The years go by, but the pain remains. Kathy told the interviewer the same thing she has told me many times since I first met her in Washington DC in 2019 – “We have to relive this every two years.” She won’t stop, either. She promised Hailey as she breathed her last breath that she would never give up on fighting for justice for her.

I wrote their story, published in a book, Voices That Will Not Be Silenced. I flew out to Colorado to interview Kathy and the family in 2020. Though I held my emotions together with journalistic detachment during the interview as she relayed the heartbreaking story of her last moments with her daughter as she left this earth, I wept as I transcribed the interview and again when I wrote the chapter. I could not hold back the tears as I listened to The American Border Story interview, as she again recounted the horror of that day. I never met Hailey, but her life continues to impact my own and that of so many others.

Her story is not an isolated case. Everyone knows a couple of the names – Laken Riley and Iryna Zarutska – but for every story that hits the news cycle, there are thousands more stories ignored by the media. Their families mourn in the shadows of inflammatory rage-bait pieces attacking ICE and politicians who fight to protect American citizens.

Illegal immigrants, aliens, undocumented – whatever you want to call them – are treated with kid gloves when they commit horrific crimes in our country. This is something I learned when working on the book. I didn’t know that before. Did you? Many other Angel Families, whose stories I mentioned in Voices have reported the same thing.

Kathy told The American Border Story, “He was protected every step of the way.” The late Senator Linda Collins-Smith found the same thing as she investigated the response of law enforcement and the court system in dealing with the crimes committed by illegals, who appear to get special treatment on their way through the justice system.

This should not be.

Arrests, bail, and parole for an illegal looks different than that of an American. When a US citizen is out on bail for a crime or released on parole, there is at least an appearance of accountability. Parolees are monitored. When an illegal is let back on the streets on parole, they often disappear. They aren’t tracked. Many of them continue to commit more crimes and harm more Americans when they get out. That is a huge problem.

This is not racism. It’s not hatred or extremism or any of the other ‘isms the media or leftists paint it out to be. Mercy for illegals all too often winds up being injustice for American citizens. One of the primary functions that any nation’s government is charged with is that of protecting its own citizenry. It’s literally written in America’s founding documents.

Will we look into the faces of grieving parents forced to bury their child because of something as preventable as illegal immigration? Hailey King’s voice was silenced, stolen from her by a man her mom describes as having “soulless eyes.” I stand with her mother, and thousands of other Angel Families, to fight for policies and legislation that goes beyond securing the border to protecting American families from the criminals who are still here after invading our country.

Terri LaPoint is the President of the Republican Women of Trussville and the author of “Voices That Will Not Be Silenced”, an exposé of the dark underbelly of agencies that are supposed to protect children. An award-winning investigative journalist who has covered hundreds of cases of medical kidnapping, she is passionate about speaking out in support of unjustly separated families. She lives in Odenville, and is on Facebook.

Recently, LaPoint was a candidate for Congress in Alabama’s Third District.

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