A popular tour guide’s death leads to more scrutiny of border issues

Kristie Thibodeaux’s gunfire death made headlines first because it happened in the French Quarter — New Orleans’ oldest neighborhood and a place where residents of historic homes and owners of tourist-dependent restaurants and clubs have long worried about recurring violent crime.

Then came the news that one of three suspects in the armed robbery and shooting of the 43-year-old tour guide was a juvenile with an arrest record and an ankle monitor that wasn’t working. And, then, the revelation that another was a 19-year-old Honduran national in the country illegally since at least 2019.

“This man should have never been in Louisiana. Enough is enough,” Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said on X soon after word of the suspect’s immigration status became public.

Republicans in Louisiana have sought to blame President Joe Biden and his immigration policies, but the Honduran charged in the case was first apprehended by U.S. immigration authorities at the border in Texas when Donald Trump was president. And the case exposed other failures in the justice system beyond border policy.

The broken ankle monitor allowed the 15-year-old to be on the streets, and that failure has prompted bipartisan calls for reform of the state juvenile court system. Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of Landry, ordered an investigation into the juvenile court’s ankle monitoring contracts.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«RELATED COVERAGE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true»