A Texas woman whose son was murdered by an illegal alien put House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on the spot during a town hall Tuesday evening.

CNN host Jake Tapper called on Laura for an audience question about sanctuary cities. Laura shared how her son had been "tortured," "tied up like an animal," and set on fire by an illegal immigrant in 2010.

"I am not a one-story mother. This happens every day because there are no laws enforcing the border," Laura said. "How do you reconcile in your head about allowing people to disavow the law?"

"The second part of my question is this: if you need to go home tonight and line up your babies as you say, and your grandbabies, which one of them could you look in their eyes today, and tell them that they're expendable for another foreign person to have a nicer life? Which one would you look to say, you, my child, are expendable for someone else to come over here and not follow the law."



Pelosi was visibly thrown off by the blunt question and expressed her condolences to Laura.

"I commend you for sharing your story. I can't even imagine," Pelosi said.

"You can't," Laura shot back.

"There is, there is nothing, I'm sure that can compare to the grief that you have. And so I pray for you. I pray for you," Pelosi said. "Again, we all pray that none of us has to experience what you have experienced. So thank you for channeling your energy to help prevent something like that from happening.

"But I do want to say to you, that in our sanctuary cities, our people are not disobeying the law. These are, law-abiding citizens, it enables them to, to be there without being reported to ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in case of another crime that they might bear witness to."

Laura then asked if after the person who killed her son gets out of jail, he would receive sanctuary or permission to reside in Pelosi's home district in San Francisco - one of more than 360 cities and counties nationally where illegal immigrants are protected from prosecution for unlawfully entering the country as long as they reside in that jurisdiction.

"Of course not. Of course not," Pelosi said.

The California lawmaker asked Laura if her son had been in a sanctuary city when the crimes were committed - a digression into the technicalities of the crime for reasons that were not clarified.

Laura said the policy outside Houston was a spoken one at the time, not yet written into the books. Pelosi went back to defending sanctuary cities without answering the two questions.

"It doesn't matter," Pelosi said to the woman's Houston response, despite having asked her about the location of the homicide.

"You lost your son, that's the important thing. I just do think that we have to stipulate to a set of facts, and the fact is - is that no, no your son would not, that's not what the point is. The point is - is that you do not turn law enforcement officers into immigration officers. That is really what the point is in the sanctuary city. So, it is not a question of getting sanctuary. Someone who has - who has - is guilty of a crime. They should be deported. Or sent to jail for what they do if you can catch them in time."