On September 26, a man named Edwin Alexander Sosa-Gonzalez ran his vehicle into a gas station parking lot at the intersection of Tibbs Avenue and 16th Street in Indianapolis, killing 33-year-old Tamara Renee Thomas. Then he ran.

Sosa-Gonzalez was drunk. He'd been drunk behind the wheel before. And he wasn't supposed to be in the country.

According to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Sosa-Gonzalez — a Honduran national — illegally entered the United States through Texas in July 2021, was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol, and was released into the interior under the Biden administration's catch-and-release framework. That was the moment this became preventable. That was the moment someone in a federal office made a decision, and Tamara Renee Thomas's life became a line item in a processing backlog.

This wasn't his first encounter with law enforcement after release. In February 2024, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department arrested Sosa-Gonzalez on charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated and endangering a person, plus operating without a license. He was drinking and driving without a license in a country he entered illegally, and he was still here.

"This illegal alien, who had been released into our country by the Biden Administration, took the life of 33-year-old Tamara Renee Thomas because he was drunk behind the wheel," Mullin said. "This disaster was completely avoidable, and were it not for the reckless open-border policies of the Biden Administration, this woman would still be alive."

Mullin isn't editorializing. He's describing a sequence. Border Patrol caught Sosa-Gonzalez in Texas. The Biden DHS released him. IMPD caught him driving drunk without a license. He stayed. He drove drunk again. Tamara Thomas is dead.

The charges filed against Sosa-Gonzalez tell the rest of the story: operating while intoxicated causing death, and leaving the scene of a vehicle accident causing death or catastrophic injury. On September 27 — one day after the crash — ICE lodged a detainer with the Marion County Jail. One day too late for Tamara Thomas, but five years too late by any honest accounting.

The catch-and-release pipeline that processed Sosa-Gonzalez in July 2021 was running at industrial scale. The Biden administration's position was that these individuals posed no public safety threat and would comply with future immigration proceedings. Sosa-Gonzalez complied with nothing. He didn't show up for his future. He showed up drunk on Tibbs Avenue.

Every time this happens — and it keeps happening — the response from the open-borders side is the same: you can't judge an entire policy by individual cases. The policy isn't being judged by individual cases. The individual cases are the policy. Catch-and-release is a decision to accept a certain number of Tamara Thomases as the cost of processing efficiency. The bureaucrats who designed it will never have to attend the funeral.

Sosa-Gonzalez is currently being held at the Marion County Jail. ICE has its detainer in place. The system that should have removed him in 2021 is finally, five years later, paying attention.