Anti-illegal immigration activists are pinning the blame on US authorities for the loss of American lives at the hands of illegal immigrants who managed to stay in the US despite deportation orders issued on them.
The latest such death was that of a Massachusetts woman who was killed by a bullet fired through the ceiling of her room while she was sleeping in her bed, Fox News reported.
The victim, 41-year-old Mirta Rivera, was a grandmother who worked as a nurse. She was killed on July 4 from an apartment upstairs where two illegal migrants resided despite being given federal deportation orders.
The two suspects in the killing, Wilton Lara-Calmona and Jose M. Lara-Mejia, both nationals of the Dominican Republic, had long histories of illegally entering US territory.
Lara-Calmona, 38, was already deported in 2012 and then arrested for re-entering the country last November, wrote the Boston Herald.
Lara-Mejia, on the other hand, was caught crossing the border in 2013 and was ordered to be kicked out last year. However, he managed to stay in the US illegally.
Rivera's case follows the murder of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco on July 1.
Another murder case, in which an illegal immigrant was accused of fatally stabbing a woman, has been filed in Connecticut.
The cases put the spotlight on illegal immigrant crime, which has evolved into a hot-button issue.
"This has been happening all over the country for several years," said Dan Cadman, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. "I hope the American public is stirred up and angry about it," he added.
"But I hope they realise there are so many more victims," said Cadman, who is also a retired federal immigration official. "There are families all over the country that are grieving because they lost their mother, father, brother, sister, child or spouse needlessly."
In Connecticut, a 40-year-old Haitian illegal immigrant named Jean Jacques who was freed in January after serving 17 years in prison for attempted murder, was accused of stabbing Casey Chadwick, 25, to death and placing her in a closet last month.
Meanwhile, Steinle's murder sparked a blame game among local, state, and federal authorities.
The US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they already asked that San Francisco hold the suspect, Francisco Sanchez, until they could pick him up and evict him from the US.
San Francisco's sheriff refused, saying it was only a "request" and that he was disallowed from complying with such.
In the Jacques case, Connecticut authorities said he was released in January to the custody of the concerned US department but was never deported.
Connecticut became the first state last year to implement a measure that banned law enforcers from holding people only because federal authorities asked that they be held for deportation.
The legislation is seen to "strengthen immigrant families," said Fox News. It also does not extend to convicts like Jacques or immigrants with a "final order" of deportation.
It is hard, however, to pinpoint the main culprit as local and state authorities rarely pass comprehensive codes on non-cooperation with the federal government on handling illegal migrants, said an expert on immigration.
The federal government, meanwhile, has failed to implement its own immigration laws.
"We have two-tiered sanctuary policies," said Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "You have it at the local level, where cities refuse to cooperate, but you also have it at the national level. The Obama administration won't enforce the laws federally, and the local communities won't locally.
"You could make the case that America is now a sanctuary country," Dane said.
