MIGRANT CRIME AND THE DALLAS BEHEADING. Add this to the list of terrible crimes committed by illegal immigrants in the United States: In a Dallas hotel last week, Yordanis Cobos-Martinez, a Cuban in the U.S. illegally, was cleaning a room when he got into an argument with the hotel manager, Chandra Nagamallaiah. Cobos-Martinez was apparently angry that Nagamallaiah “didn’t speak to him directly and instead relied on [a female co-worker] for translation,” according to a police affidavit.
Cobos-Martinez left for a moment and came back with a machete. He allegedly began hacking at Nagamallaiah, who tried unsuccessfully to fend him off. Nagamallaiah’s wife and son were there and also tried unsuccessfully to stop Cobos-Martinez.
Like every other horrible act in America today, the whole thing was captured on surveillance video. Cobos-Martinez kept swinging the machete, and Nagamallaiah ended up in a defensive crouch. It went on and on and on. Finally, Cobos-Martinez reportedly chopped off Nagamallaiah’s head. “The suspect then kicked the head twice into the parking lot,” the affidavit said. The video shows Nagamallaiah’s head bouncing along the pavement “like a soccer ball,” spewing blood until it rolled to a stop. Finally, Cobos-Martinez picked up the head and threw it in a dumpster.
People nearby called 911. According to one news account, “Cobos-Martinez was found by authorities covered in his manager’s blood and still holding the machete just a few blocks away from the scene.” He was arrested and charged with capital murder.
Authorities quickly discovered Cobos-Martinez was in the U.S. illegally. Then they learned his criminal history. Cobos-Martinez appears to have been in the country for several years. This is his record, according to an account by Dallas television station NBCDFW:
In February 2017, Cobos-Martinez stole a Mercedes in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The car broke down along I-95, where he was arrested and charged with felony grand theft motor vehicle. Four months later, in June 2017, in South Lake Tahoe, California, a police report details a carjacking in which Cobos-Martinez, while naked, tried to force himself into a woman’s car while pulling her hair and clothes and sitting on her lap. Cobos-Martinez told police he had about 20 beers and smoked a joint of marijuana before the carjacking. His criminal activity then continued to Texas, where in 2018, he was arrested on an indecency with a child through sexual contact charge in Harris County after allegedly grabbing a 14-year-old girl, bringing her behind bushes and assaulting her. The charge was later dismissed for insufficient evidence. He spent one year behind bars for an assault charge related to the case.
As late as last year, Cobos-Martinez was walking around free. Then, according to NBCDFW, he was arrested by Dallas Area Rapid Transit police on a charge related to the California case. He ended up in the custody of the ICE Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations. There, officials sought to return Cobos-Martinez to Cuba. But Cuba would not take him back, due to his extensive criminal record. So on Jan. 13 of this year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement just let Cobos-Martinez go. (Remember, this was during the Biden administration’s final days in office.) Eight months later, Cobos-Martinez was reportedly kicking Chandra Nagamallaiah’s head around like a soccer ball.
Now, Cobos-Martinez is back in custody, this time with President Donald Trump’s ICE. He obviously has to face criminal charges, but whatever happens on that score, if the Trump administration is in power, Cobos-Martinez will never spend another free day in the U.S.
Now the political fight. Many Democrats bristle when Republicans talk about “migrant crime,” that is, crimes committed by migrants who are in the U.S. illegally. They argue that immigrants, even illegal immigrants, commit crimes at lower rates than natural-born Americans. They also accuse the GOP of targeting immigrants, especially those with darker skin than themselves. For their part, Republicans say there are plenty of hideous crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Why add that to the crime that is already in the country?
The nation saw a version of that argument in January, when Congress debated and passed the Laken Riley Act, named after the Georgia nursing student who was sexually assaulted and murdered while jogging in February 2024. An illegal immigrant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was convicted of killing Riley. The act, now the Laken Riley Law, calls for the detention of illegal immigrants who have been “charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or admit to having committed … burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.” (Ibarra had been arrested for shoplifting in Georgia, but he was not detained despite his illegal status.)
Quite a few House Democrats, 46 in all, joined all 217 Republicans in voting for the Laken Riley Act. But 156 Democrats voted against it, many on the argument that it did not respect the due process rights of illegal immigrants accused of crimes. Among those who voted against it was the politically ambitious California Democrat, Rep. Ro Khanna.
“What happened to Laken Riley was outrageous, and my heart goes out to her family,” Khanna told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in January. “Any violent criminal, any criminal of a serious offense who’s convicted ought to be deported. But my objection to this bill was that the standard was arrest. In our country, in my view, you are innocent until proven guilty. Why not make sure that someone who has been arrested for shoplifting or arrested for burglary, and has been here maybe 10, 20 years, maybe a DACA kid, that they first get the court process and are convicted before they’re deported.”
That was last year. This year, Khanna is sounding a bit tougher in the wake of the horror at the hotel in Dallas. “The brutal beheading of a hardworking Indian American immigrant in front of his wife and son is horrific,” Khanna posted. “The murderer had multiple prior arrests for violent theft and child endangerment and was undocumented. He should not have been free on American streets.”
When a Democratic follower took offense at Khanna mentioning that Cobo-Martinez is “undocumented,” that is, in the U.S. illegally, Khanna pointed out, “I voted against Laken Riley. But someone here undocumented who commits a violent crime should not be here after they have due process. Do you disagree?”
Khanna’s original post did not suggest that Cobo-Martinez should be deported, merely that he “should not have been free” in the U.S. The second post said an “undocumented,” that is, illegal immigrant, “who commits a violent crime should not be here after they have due process.” Judging by Khanna’s votes, the killer of Laken Riley had not received enough due process to be detained before he murdered her. But the killer of Chandra Nagamallaiah had received enough due process to be detained before he wielded the machete.
In Khanna’s world, Laken Riley was an unfortunate victim of a system Khanna did not see fit to change. Nagamallaiah was the victim of an outrage that Khanna demands be corrected. But whatever one congressman’s inconsistency, the obvious fact is that both Riley and Nagamallaiah should be alive today, their murderers deported before they ever had a chance to kill.