PLANT CITY, Fla.—Widow Nikki Jones listened to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis demand during a recent press conference, “Where’s the outrage of the failed border policies of the Biden administration?”
“I don’t hear outrage about the criminal aliens that have gotten through and then victimize people—not only in Florida, but all throughout the country,” he railed.
Choking back tears as she watched him on Facebook, Jones took notice of the governor’s comments.
Then, casting a heart-wrenching look at her two small daughters, she shouted at the screen, “Your outrage is right here!”
Jones’ 40-year-old husband, Shane, was killed three years ago in a traffic accident involving an illegal immigrant with numerous arrests for driving infractions. The 20-year Air Force veteran also left behind two little girls, now 3 and 5.
Along with missing her husband, Nikki Jones now faces challenges that she'd never imagined.
She struggles to pay the mortgage, she told The Epoch Times. And other household bills are piling up too—utilities, groceries, daycare fees, and property taxes.
Nikki and Shane believed they were living in their “forever home,” the place where their girls would take their first steps, where they'd have their first visits from the tooth fairy, and primp for the prom and first dates. Those are now the milestones their father will never be a part of.
Tears well in 5-year-old Harley’s eyes as she touches a photo of her daddy in his military uniform.
“I miss him,” she says softly.
Raven, 3, has no memories of her father. But she knows him well from the stories and the photos on the “memory shelf” that were put up so the girls will never forget.
Even after nearly three years, the tragic memory stirs anger in Jones, especially as she looks at her daughters. They are the reasons she feels she must share her pain in the hopes of influencing lawmakers to stop illegal immigration.
On Nov. 2, 2019, Shane Jones and his friend Matthew Garrison were riding their motorcycles along a Plant City, Florida, road at about 7 p.m., when a gray Chevrolet Avalanche violated the right of way and slammed into them, according to court records. Garrison suffered broken bones in the crash; Jones was pronounced dead at the scene, records show.
The truck was driven by Daniel Campos Castro, 35, suspected to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Official records obtained by The Epoch Times, slow alternate spellings of his name, including Camposcastro and Campos-Castro.
Campos Castro refused tests to check his blood alcohol content at the scene, according to multiple official reports. Court records show a detective received a warrant from a judge later that day and, six hours after the crash, a blood alcohol test was performed on Campos Castro, who was being held at a Tampa jail.
At that point, his blood alcohol content was below the legal limit, reports show. Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) drops about 0.015 percent every hour, as the alcohol is metabolized by the body, regardless of weight, height or age.At the scene of the fatal crash, Campos Castro’s “breath smelled of alcohol,” the detective said, also noting that he had “bloodshot, watery eyes.” There were “unopened beer bottles in the rear of the vehicle and there was an unopened container of cold beer found outside the vehicle,” records show the deputy noted.
Documents filed in the 13th Judicial Circuit Court said Campos Castro did “by careless or negligent operation of the motor vehicle cause death to another human being.” A Hillsborough County report indicates a records check of the Driver and Vehicle Information Database (DAVID) showed that Campos Castro has never had a driver’s license, something he reportedly affirmed to authorities during a previous arrest.Campos Castro was convicted of a third-degree felony of driving without a valid driver’s license and causing death or serious injury and a first-degree misdemeanor of driving under the influence with a blood alcohol content over .15. He was sentenced to four years in state prison.
Records with the Hillsborough Country Sheriff’s Office note a federal “ICE Hold,” also known as a detainer, which is a request by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to hold an arrested immigrant suspected of violating immigration laws. The request is to hold the person for 48 hours after the time the inmate is scheduled to be released. Some local law enforcement agencies that consider themselves to be “sanctuary” jurisdictions may ignore such holds.
A significant part of Nikki Jones’ anguish is that Campos Castro was a repeat offender.
In April 2013, he was arrested again after crashing a Dodge Charger, according to an incident report from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. The arresting officer wrote Campos Castro’s car had been “speeding and swerving, almost veering into the path of an oncoming vehicle.”
After being pulled over, Campos Castro showed a Mexican ID, said he had no Florida driver’s license, and had “glassy-looking, bloodshot, watery eyes, an unsteady gait, and breath that smelled of alcohol,” the report shows. Campos Castro, who “swayed when he stood outside his car,” according to the report, told the officer he'd been drinking beer, pointed to an 18-pack on the floor of the car, and “mentioned” that he was “drunk,” the officer wrote.
A breath test, delayed for about two hours until the arrival of a Spanish-speaking deputy, showed his blood alcohol level at .194, according to the report. That’s more than twice the legal limit in Florida.
He was charged with driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. He was listed on the report as unemployed and living in nearby Lakeland. After the arrest, he completed “DUI school” and “substance abuse treatment,” according to records from the state Dept. of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
In November 2018, Campos Castro was again arrested again after a vehicular crash, this time in Auburndale, Florida, by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. When a deputy asked for his driver’s license, Campos Castro told the officer, “I don’t have one,” and presented an ID from Mexico, according to the report. He later was convicted for operating a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s license.“He knew what to do to get around the law,” Jones insists. “He was well-coached by some lawyer in his other incidents.”
After the initial shock of losing her husband, Jones said she pulled out of her depressive state and embarked on a mission. She wanted justice for Shane. She also wanted to bring awareness to the way illegals crossing the border are “destroying American citizens’ lives,” she said.
So Jones began to collect reports related to Campos Castro and his driving infractions and put them in a binder to show to any public official who would “give her five minutes.” She made phone calls and sent letters and emails to lawmakers. She reached out in multiple ways to U.S. Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, both Republicans representing Florida. She even tried to reach former President Donald Trump.
Beyond the obviously automated responses, none responded personally, she said.
Then she reached out to DeSantis and was astonished when a meeting was scheduled.
Jones, who describes herself as an “Angel Wife,” sat down with the governor in February. He listened intently to her story, she said. She passed along her binder of reports in hopes that he could do something.
“He sat there listening, really listening to me, and you could just see the wheels turning in his head,” she recalled. “There’s not much he can do on a state level, because illegal immigration is a federal issue. But I believe he is doing all he can.”
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported in August that there are “4.9 million—including some 900,000 ‘gotaways’—who have eluded apprehension and have since disappeared into American communities.”
DeSantis has been both praised and vilified for flying illegal migrants from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 14. Lawsuits have been filed against him for taking the action.
Meanwhile, reports of crashes and crimes committed by illegal immigrants continue to accumulate.
On Oct. 12, a Mexican woman in the United States on an expired work visa was charged with DUI manslaughter at the scene of a crash. A Polk County Sheriff’s Office report said she was impaired.
A 22-month-old boy was found deceased at the scene, authorities said, and a 5-year-old boy was taken to a hospital with a fractured neck.
“[The woman] provided two breath samples that showed a breath-alcohol content of 0.141 g/210L of breath and 0.139 g/210L of breath,” Brian Bruchey, a public information officer with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said in a written release. “The legal threshold is 0.08 g/210L of breath.”
Authorities have notified ICE concerning the arrest and expired visa.
“It is absolutely maddening, with so many other options available, that someone would choose to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs,“ Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a written statement. ”The result of this woman’s poor choice is the death of one child and the very serious injury to another child.”
On Sept. 23, another illegal immigrant driver struck and killed a veteran Pinellas County deputy, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. The officer was directing traffic at a construction site where the immigrant was at the wheel of a front-end loader that hit the deputy. He fled the scene, ran back to co-workers and told them he had “just killed someone” and enlisted their help in hiding his construction hat and vest, Gualtieri said.
“They were hindering the investigation, not giving us answers to the questions we needed,” he said.
“He didn’t have a driver’s license. He’s got nothing. He shouldn’t have been here to begin with, and he shouldn’t have been driving. He shouldn’t have been working … He has no qualifications to drive a front loader, ” Gualtieri stated.
The man entered the United States illegally through Eagle Pass, Texas, on Oct. 25, 2021, and was turned around and sent back to Mexico by border patrol after he was unable to properly identify who he was, the sheriff said.
“There is no record of him ever legally coming back into the United States, and he was here illegally.”
Gualtieri found out that the man has been in the Tampa area since March and that the majority of construction workers at the scene gave authorities false names and lied.
The man is facing charges of leaving the scene of an accident involving death, which is a first-degree felony with a four-year minimum mandatory prison sentence.
But local agencies have no jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws, the sheriff said.
Nikki Jones vows she will never give up fighting for victims’ rights. Justice wasn’t served in the case of her husband, she declares. And she fears this will happen to many more families.
“I don’t want another child to grow up without a father, or a wife [to be] without a husband,” she said. “How many other families have been destroyed by illegal aliens within Florida, let alone in the United States?”
Even if Campos Castro is deported, Jones fears he'll just come back—again.
“I have seen his records and he has established a life here since 2013,” she said. “He is working and has a family here.”
It’s unclear how he was able to gain employment with BRB Construction of Riverview, Florida, without proper credentials and clearance through E-Verify. E-Verify is a web-based system through which employers electronically confirm employment eligibility of their employees, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Not enough is being done to stop illegal immigration, Jones says. But she was heartened to hear DeSantis again urge the federal government to take action during his Sept. 20 press conference.
DeSantis called for reinstatement of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. Revoked by President Joe Biden, it required people seeking asylum in the United States and showing credible fear to return to Mexico to await a hearing in U.S. immigration court.
“Let’s take the cartels seriously,“ DeSantis stated emphatically. ”When you have a vice president saying there’s no border crisis; when we’ve had millions of people come across illegally, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is “releasing people from prisons and sending them up to the southern border,“ he said. ”You’ve had people that have been victimized by criminal aliens who’ve gotten across the border. That’s a big problem.”
DeSantis’ office is investigating how illegal immigrants may use fraudulent documents to obtain employment with contractors working with the State of Florida, and deciding how to take action, according to a prepared statement.This “is just one of the harms that our state faces because of the federal government’s open border policies,” the statement read. “The State of Florida is not a sanctuary state and illegal immigrants are not authorized to work here. For reasons such as this, we will continue our lawful efforts to interdict and relocate illegal immigrants.”
This year, it will be a particularly hard day for Nikki Jones. Some media outlets, she said, seem to “glorify the immigrants and forget what some of them are doing to American citizens.”
“Every time the news and media discuss the humanitarian crisis, it’s a slap by illegal immigrants that voluntarily violate our laws. It minimizes the suffering of my family, as well as the other victims.
“I’m here to tell the other side!”
