Rekubit Exchange:A popular tour guide’s death leads to more scrutiny of border issues

Kristie Thibodeaux’s gunfire death made headlines first because it happened in the French Quarter — New Orleans’ oldest neighborhood and Rekubit Exchangea place where residents of historic homes and owners of tourist-dependent restaurants and clubs have long worried about recurring violent crime.

Then came the news that one of three suspects in the armed robbery and shooting of the 43-year-old tour guide was a juvenile with an arrest record and an ankle monitor that wasn’t working. And, then, the revelation that another was a 19-year-old Honduran national in the country illegally since at least 2019.

“This man should have never been in Louisiana. Enough is enough,” Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said on X soon after word of the suspect’s immigration status became public.

Republicans in Louisiana have sought to blame President Joe Biden and his immigration policies, but the Honduran charged in the case was first apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities at the border in Texas when Donald Trump was president. And the case exposed other failures in the justice system beyond border policy.

The broken ankle monitor allowed the 15-year-old to be on the streets, and that failure has prompted bipartisan calls for reform of the state juvenile court system. Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, ordered an investigation into the juvenile court’s ankle monitoring contracts.

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One suspect was a 17-year-old juvenile, and the killing came at a time when cities across the U.S. are struggling with underage offenders with easy access to guns carrying out violence and robberies.

Thibodeaux was shot to death as she sat in her car early on the morning of June 30 in the French Quarter. Police say the suspects in her death had carried out a string of robberies.

Brian Cain, owner of the Crawl New Orleans tour business, said Thibodeaux was one of his longest-tenured employees — a vivacious, caring colleague who was beloved by coworkers and the tourists she served.

As the Republican National Convention nears, crimes carried out by immigrants have fed into the political rhetoric of Trump. Trump has argued the influx of immigrants is causing a crime surge in the U.S., although statistics actually show violent crime is on the way down.

Conservatives point to other recent killings in Texas and Georgia to make their point about border failures during the Biden administration. In February, Laken Hope Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was attacked and killed near running trails on the University of Georgia campus. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who immigration officials say entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was allowed to stay. In Houston, 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was strangled and found in a creek last month, and authorities have charged two Venezuelan men who entered the country illegally.

FBI statistics do not separate out crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, nor is there any evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. Studies have found that people living in the country illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.

Immigration officials in New Orleans say it’s not clear when, where or how Joshua Aviala-Bonifacio entered the country. He is a Honduran national and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office says he was first encountered by the border patrol near Hidalgo, Texas, when he was 15 in May 2019.

He was released on an “on an order of recognizance” on May 14, 2019, according to ICE. He later wound up in the New Orleans area, where he has an arrest record.

“On multiple occasions, Bonifacio has been arrested for theft and contributing to the delinquency of juveniles,” an ICE statement said. “Since February 2024, Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office has booked Bonifacio for five local violations.”

Now, he faces a murder charge in Thibodeaux’s death.

Cain sees multiple reasons to be dissatisfied with state, local and federal agencies and the circumstances that led to the suspects being on the street.

“If he’s illegally in the country, then he shouldn’t be here. But most importantly, it’s how did the local system fail over and over and over again, not only letting him on the street, but also not detecting that he was, in fact, here illegally.”