LONG BEACH, Calif.—The day after Agnes Gibboney learned that her son’s murderer would be released from jail and immediately deported back to Mexico, she visited her son’s grave and the hospital where he was born. She left more than two dozen roses at his headstone and dropped a few dozen more into the sea at a beach that the two of them used to visit.
Gibboney is a member of Angel Families, a group of family members of those who have been killed by illegal immigrants. Her only son, Ronald Da Silva, was standing with a friend in his driveway on April 26, 2002, when he was shot and killed by Luis Humberto Gonzalez, a Mexican national who was in the country illegally.
Prior to shooting Gibboney’s son, Gonzalez had been arrested and released multiple times; he was once deported back to Mexico, but returned to the United States illegally.
Gonzalez was arrested on Sept. 30, 1994, and was detained for 60 days on a burglary charge; he was released with 36 months of probation, according to information Gibboney obtained from private investigative sources. He was again arrested in March 1995, for giving a false ID to a police officer and was given probation. In June 1996, he was again arrested for burglary, but released once again on probation.
A U.S. immigration judge ordered Gonzalez to be removed in August 1997; he was eventually deported to Mexico in April 1999. Not long after that, Gonzalez illegally returned to the United States. In September of 2000, he was arrested for corporal injury to a cohabitant but was released after spending 15 days in jail, with a three-year probation.
Less than 20 months after being released from jail and still on probation, Gonzalez shot Gibboney’s son.
Gibboney said that if the judge dealing with Gonzalez’s case in 2000 had said, “Wait a minute, you were deported. What are you doing here?”, then her only son might still be alive.
Gonzalez was charged with first-degree murder, but eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He was released on Nov. 22, after serving 85 percent of his sentence, and was immediately picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He then was sent back to Mexico, “sparing our country of his presence and the ability to create more victims,” Gibboney said.
Having been worried for months about Gonzalez’s upcoming release, Gibboney said that she had suffered “a tsunami of emotions” and stress until she received the notice that Gonzalez was deported. “It’s been a hell that I have been put through by my government and the California Democrats not taking care of securing the borders,” said Gibboney.
“I am just incredibly grateful to my president who is the most incredible compassionate hardworking man bringing the awareness and fixing this immigration insanity that Congress is doing nothing about.”
She also said that Congress needs to stop wasting time on impeachment efforts and get to work on border security.
Trump wrote in a tweet on Nov. 24, after Gibboney appeared on Fox News, “Agnes, your great boy Ronald is looking down, very proud of you!”
Gibboney is also an activist and senator of the interim government of the New California movement, a statewide grassroots effort to break most rural areas away from California and to form a new state. She told The Epoch Times that her son’s death was her main reason for becoming active in the movement.
The New California movement holds that the current state has a “mono-party control” system instead of a republican form of government and has adopted sanctuary state policies that have failed to protect California from crimes committed by immigrants who are in the country illegally.
Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 54, called the California Sanctuary Law, in October 2017. The law prohibits local and state agencies from honoring any requests from ICE to hold an illegal immigrant who has created a crime or misdemeanor.
Paul Preston, president of the movement, said: “New California stands against sanctuary state [policies]. We were one of the first ones who came out when the law was passed.” He said SB-54 has contributed to the deaths of people killed by illegal immigrants and has “created lots of heartaches for Agnes Gibboney.”
