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By Katherine Fung
Senior Writer
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The suspect in Friday's massacre in Texas was deported at least four times for entering the United States illegally before last week's tragedy, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On Friday night, a man identified by ICE as a 38-year-old Mexican national named Francisco Oropeza, went on a shooting rampage in the small rural town of Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbor asked him to stop firing his gun in his yard because a baby next door was trying to sleep.
The confrontation turned deadly when the suspect re-emerged from his house with an assault rifle and killed five people, including a 9-year-old boy, in a neighboring house.
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The manhunt for Oropeza, who authorities say is considered armed and dangerous, is still ongoing. A warrant for his arrest has been issued by the Cold Spring Texas Sheriff's Office.
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ICE told Newsweek that Oropeza was first removed from the U.S. after an immigration judge ordered his removal on March 16, 2009. At an unknown time and location, he unlawfully reentered the country and was subsequently apprehended and removed three more times by ICE in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016.
The agency said that Oropeza had also been sentenced to jail time in the U.S. before when he was convicted of driving while intoxicated in Montgomery County, Texas in 2012.
On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a $50,000 reward for the capture of Oropeza, who Abbott said "is in the country illegally." The governor said the five victims of the shooting were also undocumented immigrants. Abbott's remarks garnered backlash from critics who argued that the victims should have been referred to as people, rather than "illegal immigrants."
The five victims were reportedly all Honduran nationals, although one of the victims, 21-year-old Diana Velazquez Alvardo, was a permanent resident of the U.S., according to her husband.
"The Government of Honduras deeply regrets the loss of these valuable lives and accompanies all their loved ones in their pain," Honduras' Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We demand that the pertinent authorities arrest the perpetrator of this terrible event and apply the full weight of the law."
The immigration statuses of both the perpetrator and victims have become a topic of interest amid the coverage of the shooting, with Republicans arguing that the tragedy was a result of the Biden administration's immigration policies.
"Joe Biden & Kamala Harris made the deliberate political decision to open our borders & allow SIX MILLION illegal immigrants to cross," Senator Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted on Sunday. "This death & carnage is the predictable and tragic result."
Other officials, like San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers, whose force arrived at the scene, have said those statuses are not important to the investigation.
"I don't care if he was here legally. I don't care if he was here illegally. He was in my county," Capers said on Sunday. "Five people died in my county, and that is where my heart is—in my county, protecting my people to the best of our ability."
As of Sunday afternoon, there are "zero leads" on Oropeza's location.
Update 05/02/23 11:31 a.m. ET: This article was updated to change the spelling of Oropeza.
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