Those who knew and loved Joshua Wilkerson described the 18-year-old as friendly, “solid in his faith,” and eager to help other students in his Houston-area high school. “Joshua had never been in a fight in his life,” said his mother.
That all changed on November 16, 2010.
A fellow student and acquaintance named Hermilo Moralez asked him for a ride home. Police say after they arrived, the 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Belize launched an unprovoked attack on Wilkerson, who had driven Moralez home numerous times in the past. Moralez, a skilled martial artist, punched Wilkerson in the face and “kicked so hard in the stomach that it sent his spleen into his spine, and sliced it in two,” his mother testified to Congress. Moralez beat him with a wooden rod and injured his classmate so extensively that police categorized the injuries as torture. Even Moralez called his assault “very violent,” court records show.
Moralez then tied Wilkerson’s body, drove Wilkerson’s truck to a remote location, and set him on fire. “At one point, Hermilo stated that Joshua kind of ‘melted’ into the ground,” say court documents.
While propounding numerous alibis, the killer tried to blame the victim. “The suspect claims Josh began to come on to him in a sexual manner and that’s how the fight started, but we don’t believe that information is very credible,” said Lt. Onesimo Lopez, a local police officer.
“This was our family’s 9/11 terrorist attack by a foreign invader,” his mother, Laura Wilkerson, testified to the U.S. Senate in 2015.
While her son’s killer has been convicted, sentenced, and will spend decades in U.S. prison, he is far from alone. A growing number of illegal immigrants has committed crimes against U.S. citizens or tried to turn America’s taxpayer-funded public schools into recruiting grounds for transnational criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua.
A recent example took place in a familiar location: the Loudoun County public schools in Virginia. The school board became infamous after a male student wearing a skirt raped and attempted to sodomize a 15-year-old girl inside a restroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28, 2021. When her father complained, school board officials had him arrested. They had transferred the teenage perpetrator to another school, where they say he victimized another female student.
The Loudoun County School Board built on his reputation for silencing parents’ concerns at its October 8 meeting, when parents complained about the district allowed a young man with a troubling history to return to school. Last year, police arrested the teenager — reportedly an illegal immigrant with ties to the violent criminal gang MS-13 — for bringing a gun to Blue Ridge Middle School and threatening to kill another student. Once again, when concerned parents spoke out, the board cut their microphones and ruled them out of order, citing the safety and privacy of the illegal immigrant.
“Where’s the protection and the safety for our children who are in school with other children who have [made] known threats, who have been arrested and who are back in the school?” asked a parent, Abbie Platt, at the school board meeting.
Even The Washington Post admits such parental fears are not misplaced. Members of MS-13 have murdered and assaulted numerous students in the nation’s high schools. During his first State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said the names of two MS-13 victims: Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, killed by MS-13 in September 2016.
“She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school. It’s like they’re everywhere,’” said Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez.
“From New York to Virginia to Texas, schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?” asked the newspaper.
In addition to crimes, gangs use schools as recruiting grounds for minors, who cannot be tried as adults. “Definitely gang involvement is a real thing in some communities,” testified Sheena Rodriguez of the president of the Alliance for a Safe Texas at a June 4 hearing of the House Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee. “Many,” she said, “have criminal histories, affiliation with gangs, or are actually adults who are potentially infiltrating our communities and schools.”
The problem is only growing, as illegal immigrants have brought between 500,000 and one million students into the U.S. public school system. The surge of unexpected enrollments has depleted local tax bases, overwhelmed school officials, and too often deprived American students of a quality education. Yet America’s uncontrolled border is also claiming innocent American lives.
Sometimes the crimes involve adults who target teenagers. Last December, 23-year-old Rafael Govea Romero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, stabbed 16-year-old high school cheerleader Lizbeth Medina to death in Edna, Texas. Authorities believe Romero, who was on probation for burglary at the time of his arrest for capital murder, broke into Medina’s apartment for robbery and, when he found the teenager at home, stabbed her in the abdomen. Medina’s mother was unaware of the crime until her daughter did not participate in the Christmas parade with the rest of her squad that afternoon and returned home to find her child’s lacerated body in her bathtub.
“This government continues to fail or even recognize that we have an issue. Americans are dying daily at the hands of criminals that we don’t even know are here,” Wilkerson boldly told U.S. senators. “You’re elected by Americans, not any other country. You should be for Americans.”
No one is certain how often illegal immigrants assault or kill American students. But “one is too many, and it was entirely preventable if the government had been doing its job and enforcing our laws,” Ira Mehlman, media director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told The Washington Stand.
“There is also culpability at the local level, because” liberal states and cities advertise themselves as “proud sanctuary jurisdictions and bend over backwards to accommodate illegal aliens rather than cooperate with federal law enforcement on those rare instances when they actually want to remove somebody,” Mehlman told TWS. “Especially under this administration, Mayorkas has essentially said once you are here, unless you’re a truly violent criminal, they are not coming for you. So when ICE issues a detainer request, that ought to be a serious indication to a sanctuary jurisdiction that this poses a serious danger. And yet very often they ignore it.”
Not only do federal officials ignore the problem, critics say, they facilitate it. Wilkerson testified that under policies favored by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, her son’s classmate fit a preferred demographic in American society. “Hermilo Moralez was brought here illegally by his illegal parents when he was 10 years old, so he fit the ‘DREAM’ kid description,” she said. The 2024 Democratic Party platform and Kamala Harris have promised amnesty for DREAMers, as well as “a pathway to citizenship” for the rest of the nation’s illegal immigrant population.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives subsequently impeached the Biden-Harris administration’s Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his failure to control the southern border. But the Democrat-controlled Senate dismissed the charges without a vote.
Liberal schools sometimes respond by punishing American students for speaking out, even in a joking way. School officials gave Christian McGhee — a 16-year-old student at Central Davidson High School in Lexington, North Carolina — a three-day suspension for using the term “illegal alien.” His English teacher had given an assignment to write about an alien, to which he asked, “Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?” When some of his Hispanic fellow students took offense, his teacher allegedly accused him of “racism,” although McGhee did not mention any ethnicity.
On behalf of those targeted by illegal immigrant crime, Wilkerson wants not merely America’s grief but its protection. “I know you will sympathize with our story, but I want more than that. I want you to be angry that America’s borders are wide open. America does not know who is in this country. It is time to put Americans first. Close the borders, figure out who is really here. Keep statistics. Realize that we are at war right here in this country,” Wilkerson testified.
Mehlman said the federal government has robust resources at its disposal, if it wished to use them.
An incoming president should “repeal those policy memos that Mayorkas put out in 2021 essentially making all illegal aliens untouchable by ICE. He basically said unless you meet certain very narrow criteria, you are going to be allowed to stay here,” Mehlman told TWS. “The other thing is, they can go after sanctuary jurisdictions. Under a law passed in 1996 sanctuary jurisdictions are actually outlawed, but nobody ever enforces that law against those jurisdictions that shields illegal aliens and violent criminals.”
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 encoded into federal law (8 U.S. Code §1373) that “a [f]ederal, [s]tate, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
“These sanctuary jurisdictions are always looking for federal grant money,” noted Mehlman. “That’s how you enforce it.”
The victims agree that action is overdue. “Sanctuary city policies scream to the criminal element of illegals in this country: ‘Come to our town USA, we’ll protect you from our terrible policemen. We’ll protect you from these tough American laws,’” said Wilkerson.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” if elected.
“I will outlaw sanctuary cities. They will be over,” the 45th president told a responsive crowd in Greenville, North Carolina, early Monday evening. He pledged to end all migrant flights, which have imported illegal immigrants into 45 U.S. cities, approximately two-thirds of them in Republican-leaning or swing states — including an estimated 326,000 to Florida. “And I will ban all welfare and federal benefits for illegals. I will restore every Trump border policy and immediately expel all illegals who violate our border.”
Experts like Mehlman say these policies will add new layers of protections to help safeguard U.S. citizens, especially young people, from illegal immigrant crime. But those already affected will never be the same.
“Our family is shattered,” Wilkerson testified. “My surviving kids have changed. Everything about us has changed. It’s by the grace of God that in our broken hearts we have a stream of memories of the loving relationship that we had with Joshua.”
AUTHOR
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
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