A district attorney in Texas has unveiled plans to seek the death penalty in an alleged murder case that became a prominent talking point in the 2024 United States presidential election.
On Friday, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg filed a notice indicating her decision to seek death sentences for Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26.
The crime they are accused of committing became a centrepiece in Republican Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election in November.
The two suspects are Venezuelan nationals, and they crossed the border into the US without the proper documentation to do so. US Border Patrol briefly arrested them after their entry into the US, but they were released and given notices to appear in court at a later date.
A few months later, in June, the two men allegedly kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, leaving her body in a Houston creek.
Trump and his allies repeatedly pointed to the case as evidence that the US needs tighter border security and stiffer penalties for migrants and asylum seekers involved in crimes.
He also campaigned with Nungaray’s mother, Alexis Nungaray, who visited the US-Mexico border with Trump and testified before Congress about her ordeal.
In Friday’s announcement, District Attorney Ogg echoed some of the criticisms of immigration enforcement that Trump made on the campaign trail.
“Jocelyn’s murder was as vile, brutal and senseless as any case in my tenure as district attorney,” Ogg said in a statement.
“And it was made worse by knowing that these two men were here illegally and, had they been held after being captured at the border, they would never have had the opportunity to murder Jocelyn and destroy her family’s future.”
In June, prosecutors filed capital murder charges against the two suspects, who are being held in jail on $10m bonds.
Multiple studies, however, have shown immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.
One survey of arrest records in Texas, funded by the National Institute of Justice, found this to be a consistent trend, across all different categories of crimes, from traffic offences to property crime.
It concluded that undocumented immigrants are arrested “at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes”.
Still, President-elect Trump often conflated immigration with criminality on the campaign trail, stirring fears of violence.
He used those fears to blast his rivals in