Dan Ferguson

Opinion contributor

In his declaration of a national emergency on our southern border, President Trump recognized the Americans who experienced the consequences of that emergency firsthand: angel moms and dads.

I never expected I would be one of them.

My beautiful daughter, Mandy, was a 28-year-old sixth-grade teacher at Eastwood Heights Elementary School, and the center of our family. She was my world, she was my wife’s best friend and, most importantly, she was my baby girl.

On the morning of November 22, 2018 — Thanksgiving Day — a man who should never have been in our country drank several beers before getting behind the wheel of a car. He blew through two red lights at an intersection, killed my daughter, and changed our lives forever.

Surveillance footage shows that Mandy was using a crosswalk as she crossed the street. A witness described the sound of the impact as being so loud that he thought two vehicles had collided, not that a human being was struck. My daughter died on the spot.

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The man, Joel Velazquez, didn’t even stop to render aid. He kept driving, then abandoned the vehicle and lied to the police, telling them his vehicle had been stolen to try to avoid being arrested.

Eventually, Velazquez admitted the truth.

Immigration laws must be enforced

Mandy was so badly injured that the police initially wouldn't let me see her body. We were eventually told that her legs were broken in multiple places and she had multiple skull fractures and broken ribs. My beautiful daughter, torn to pieces. That’s something my family and I have to live with every single day.

To makes things worse, shortly after Mandy’s funeral, we learned that the man who killed my daughter not only has an apparently criminal past, but was also in the country illegally.

He was arrested in 2017 on suspicion of assault, but a judge released him on bond. When Mandy was killed, Velazquez was still out on bond and his assault case was pending in district court. Now, he’s been charged with manslaughter in the accident involving my daughter’s death and tampering with evidence.

Unfortunately, cities like El Paso don’t enthusiastically support voluntarily assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in identifying criminal illegal immigrants. In the past, El Paso’s City Council has unanimously voted to challenge Texas’ legal ban on sanctuary cities. There are in fact hundreds of sanctuary jurisdictions around the country. How many cases are there similar to my daughter’s death?

I have never been an especially political person, but Mandy is the reason I attended President Trump's rally in El Paso Monday night, and she is why I’m with the president 100 percent on the need for effective border security, including building a wall along the vulnerable areas on our southern border. The president was right to declare our border crisis a national emergency. While the vast majority of illegal immigrants are not violent criminals, they have all violated the laws which are in place to keep the American people safe.

Partisan bickering costs American lives

In the same city and at the same time that Trump was standing up for immigration enforcement, former Representative Robert O’Rourke, who was my congressman the day Mandy was killed, led an anti-wall rally. Days later, when O'Rourke was asked if he'd tear down the border wall separating El Paso, Texas, from Juárez, Mexico, he said, "Yes, absolutely. I'd take the wall down." Juárez is the birthplace of the man who killed Mandy.

O'Rourke called his anti-wall the “March for Truth”. This is the truth: When our laws are broken, there are consequences, not just for the victims of crimes but also for the victims’ families. Mandy would not have been killed Thanksgiving morning by an illegal immigrant with a history of arrest if our immigration laws were enforced as they are written.

After Mandy was killed, O’Rourke never bothered to reach out to my family; yet by welcoming my family and me as special guests to his rally, President Trump has given me the platform to ensure that Mandy didn’t die in vain. It won’t bring Mandy back, but it might prevent this from happening in the future.

I hope the president’s efforts will convince Congress to finally do what is necessary to secure America’s borders, before another parent has to bury his or her child because partisan bickering kept politicians from doing what’s right to secure the safety of the American people.

Dan Ferguson is a retired educator and lives in El Paso, Texas.