Jose Aguilar-Martinez, a 21-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador, has been charged with felony carjacking following the killing of a Maryland grandmother in Loudoun County, Virginia. Melody Waldecker, 54, of Montgomery County, was allegedly run over by Aguilar-Martinez after he stole her car at a 7-Eleven in Sterling, Virginia, around 11:30 AM. She had been visiting her sick mother.
The Salvadoran was apprehended approximately 45 minutes later, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed his status as an illegal alien. ICE has also placed a detainer on him, so he should be transferred to their custody if he is released from jail at any point. However, local authorities frequently refuse to cooperate with ICE and release criminal illegals in defiance of detainer requests, sometimes with disastrous results.
Aguilar-Martinez is a so-called “gotaway,” meaning he crossed the U.S. border without encountering Border Patrol officers or other U.S. officials. The number of annual gotaways is estimated in the hundreds of thousands and has tripled since the inaugurations of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The latter was given special responsibility for tackling the “root causes” of illegal immigration by Biden in 2021, but it has increased exponentially under her watch.
Even if Aguilar-Martinez had been apprehended when he crossed the border, illegal aliens are usually released after minimal vetting, with immigration court dates set years into the future. The Biden–Harris government has granted a de facto amnesty to hundreds of thousands of these illegals by terminating their asylum cases with no on either deporting them or granting them refugee status.
Family members tell the press that Melody Waldecker worked as a caregiver at a nursing home in Montgomery County and was fond of spending time with her grandchildren. Her four children and eight grandchildren survive her.
