Sanctuary cities have blood on their hands for not turning over known criminal aliens to ICE for deportation before they commit murder or more mayhem. That was evident in the recent case of Bambi Larson in San Jose, as well as many others in California. But the fact that we don’t hold the line at our border itself is the culprit for all the murders committed by illegal aliens who are able to re-enter the country, even after ICE successfully apprehends and deport them. That is sadly the tragic case of Paige Gomer, who was murdered last week in Canadian County, Oklahoma.

According to the Canadian County Sheriff’s department, Ramon Hector Martine Ontiveros, a 33-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, confessed to shooting Paige Gomer the night of March 21. She leaves behind a daughter who is separated from her mother permanently. Friends have set up a GoFundMe page to help care for her daughter.

The story is all too familiar. According to a statement form ICE, Ontiveros has been caught in the country illegally on five separate occasions between 2007 and 2013. The first three times he was encountered between March 2007 and April 2011, he was “voluntarily returned to Mexico.” The fourth time he was caught was on Oct. 6, 2012. After that encounter, “he was removed on an expedited removal order the next day.” Finally, he was caught a fifth time in December 2012 and was “criminally charged and convicted of illegal entry,” but served no prison time. He was deported on January 5, 2013. He must have evaded detection at some point later and remained in the country until he was arrested by Canadian County police for first-degree murder on March 22.

How can so many criminals enter again and again and never fear any consequences? Because Ontiveros agreed to voluntarily depart, he was not designated as a re-entrant, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. However, when he was officially deported the fourth time, it should have triggered prison time for the subsequent re-entry.

This case is a poster child for Kate’s Law, a bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, mandating five years of prison time for all illegal re-entrants, with a sliding scale of severity for each subsequent re-entry. Right now, the border dynamic is win-win for illegal aliens. If they successfully evade Border Patrol, they achieve their goal, and if they are caught, they simply get sent back with no consequences, and come back again. It is baffling that the GOP-controlled Senate has declined to vote on this or similar legislation dealing with re-entrants, criminal aliens, and sanctuary cities.

Moreover, the case of Ontiveros, like so many criminal aliens who re-enter after deportation, perfectly illustrates the need for a border wall. While the border wall does not stop the lawfare of bogus asylum-seekers who deliberately surrender to the Border Patrol (because border agents feel compelled to bring them in from behind the fence), it would certainly help deter criminal elements who have been deported. Anyone with a criminal record will not want to meet a border agent and will have to attempt to gain entry surreptitiously. This is where the border wall helps.

But this completely avoidable murder also makes the case for the president to finally shut down the border and place a temporary moratorium on all applications for any immigration status at our land border. Try to imagine, as our Border Patrol is shut down by unprecedented flows of mass migration, how many of these dangerous criminals who have been deported over the years have taken advantage of the likely free ride across the border? How many more rapists and murderers have entered our country over the past six to nine months of this record flow?

Simon Rochel-Cervantes, an illegal alien from Mexico who spent 11 years in a Kansas facility for the rape of a child, is a perfect example. After serving his sentence, Rochel-Cervantes was deported back to Mexico on February 19. Guess what? He was caught by police in Kansas again just two weeks later in March!

It’s truly unimaginable how many criminals and even terrorists are getting into our country while the entire world knows that our border agents are taken off their jobs. CBP of Arizona announced last week that it apprehended people from a number of non-Western Hemisphere countries, including from Afghanistan and Yemen. Those were the ones they caught. Who was not caught? If I were the Iranian regime and really wanted to get operatives into the country undetected, now is the most auspicious time.

The president is right to blame Congress for refusing to get tougher, but at the end of the day we already have tough immigration laws. They need to be enforced. And as president of the United States, with full control over foreign affairs, foreign commerce, and entry into our country, he can shut down the entire border and refuse to process any immigration requests. This will free up all the agents to focus exclusively on keeping out criminals and national security threats from our nation – you know, what we all thought the mission of Border Patrol was supposed to be in the first place. That way, fewer American children will be separated from their parents by the grave.