People die in the world every day, yet why do we choose to highlight and bring attention to some deaths over others.
I question the morality of how some deaths are highlighted to support a narrative. On the other hand, I find it morally egregious how other deaths are ignored because they go against the narrative that we have decided that we are determined to support. It is certainly egregious for deaths to be used for false and otherwise logically faulty narratives, there is no question about that. When it comes to deaths to support narratives that are based on truth, it’s filling my mind with complications that I have a difficult time trying to thoroughly ponder. Part of me thinks that death can bring to our attention some kind of emergent truth that we weren’t aware of before or unwilling to be aware of, trying to look the other way instead and pretend this emergent truth doesn’t exist. The death of Emmett Till being an example of a death bringing attention to a society unwilling to accept an unpleasant emergent truth of how many African Americans were killed by lynchings. Yet at the same time, Death is death and a society with the moral value that all human life has equal value should treat all death as an equally horrible event. In that case, shouldn’t a death stand on its own without attaching a narrative to it. Doesn’t that risk the narrative itself overshadowing the death of that one person? It’s a dilemma I admit I don’t know the answer to myself.
I can certainly tell you my thoughts and feelings on the singling out and highlighting of the killing of Ruby Garcia. The reason this killing got highlighted and so much attention was brought to it was because the person who killed her was a man named Brandon Ortiz‑Vite, who is himself an illegal immigrant. This killing of Ruby Garcia is used to support a narrative that is not based in reality, a narrative that illegal immigrants are more violent than they actually are in reality. Of course, the fact that violent crime is more likely to be committed by American citizens than by illegal immigrants goes against this narrative. The fact that the violent crime rate is higher among American citizens has been proven time and time and time and time again. There are plenty of killings perpetrated by American citizens (with in some cases illegal immigrants being the victims of said killings) that don’t get the attention that this one killing does. Why is that? If all killing is equally wrong on a moral level shouldn’t all killings get equal attention. If anything, Brandon is right to feel that he was unfairly targeted in the attention he got after the killing and the supporting of a faulty narrative he wanted no part of. Why should Brandon’s murder case in particular be used in campaign ads and as a political talking point and be put in a category? To be clear, I am not saying the killing itself was justified but rather that it was the attention he got and the fact that both him and the person he killed became part of a faulty narrative that wasn’t justified. This killing can also point to the faulty perception that violent crime rates are rising, somehow. Yet this is also wrong. One thing to keep in mind is that violent crime has actually gone down, not up.
You’ll notice that I intentionally mention Brandon Ortiz-Vite’s name first before stating he is an illegal immigrant. Why do I do that? Maybe because I feel it is important to portray Brandon as a person with moral worth and humanity that did something wrong. Not an illegal immigrant who we have imagined in our minds as a monster. Let me be clear that I am in no way justifying the killing and that the taking of any human life is morally abhorrent in general. At the same time, that doesn’t mean we can’t have any empathy for someone who kills another person. As challenging as it can be for us to show empathy for someone who we would only like to show contempt for, I feel we must still find the empathy in ourselves in order to preserve our own humanity. To show mercy to people even if we strongly feel they shouldn’t be shown any mercy at all. It can be tempting to turn someone who kills another person into a caricature, pretending this is a two-dimensional evil person which then results in a refusal of us to see a hidden complexity of that same person, hiding the morality that exists within this same person as well that does not get seen. There is an article from MLive that gives us at least a glimpse of the morality that exists inside Brandon as well. The fact that after Brandon Ortiz-Vite killed Ruby Garcia he sought refuge in a church and then called 911 afterwards to turn themselves in is something that is worth examining. Seeking refuge in a church and then calling 911 on themselves does not strike me as something a two-dimensional villain does. I feel that if Brandon Ortiz-Vite were the two-dimensional villain people say he is that he wouldn’t take any responsibility for his actions. Brandon Ortiz-Vite would essentially shift into a fight or flight dilemma. That he would try to flee to a place where he could hide so the police and other law enforcement couldn’t find him and perhaps even seek to kill more girls afterwards. Or he would try to fight the police instead, knowing he will die as the police vastly outnumber him as he considers himself a martyr. Yet Brandon did neither of these things and any other third things I could not be thinking of. By seeking refuge in a church, it shows that he is expressing regret and remorse over what he did, perhaps even seeking forgiveness from the God he believes in even if he may feel he doesn’t deserve it. By Brandon calling the police on himself, he knows that he can never undo the horrible thing he did and he needs to hold himself responsible for his own actions. If Brandon felt he did nothing wrong, there would be no reason to call the police so he could turn himself in. I feel this line when he called the police and said, “I know what I did was wrong and I will do the time, I just don’t want to die inside” and has family that he says, “wouldn’t have him.” His plea of not wanting to die inside and not having a family I find to be so emotional for me.
I suppose I will end this article with what Ruby Garcia’s sister (the sister of the woman who was killed) said about her sister’s death. “It’s always been about illegal immigrants. Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like this?” I think this speaks for itself.
Sources:
Agar, John. “A church took in a young man. They didn’t know he was wanted for murder.” MLive. Published April 9th, 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Agar, John. “Ruby Garcia’s killer sues Trump for immigration ads, seeks citizenship and millions.” MLive. Published July 16th, 2026. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Boyke, Hannah and Yared Avalos Iniguez. “Immigrants Do Not Commit More Crimes in the US, Despite Fearmongering.” American Immigration Council. Published October 17th, 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Cappelletti, Joey. “What we know: Trump uses death of Michigan woman to stoke fears over immigration.” Associated Press. Published April 3rd, 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Crandall, Kayla. “Michigan inmate sues Trump, White House spokesperson over use of his murder case in campaign ads: Brandon Ortiz-Vite was convicted of Ruby Garcia’s murder in 2024. Now he’s asking a federal judge to order President Trump to apologize for mentioning his case.” WZZM 13 ABC. Published July 16th, 2026. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Gutierrez, Gabe; Olympia Sonnier and Rebecca Shabad. “Ruby Garcia’s sister denies Trump’s claim that he spoke to her family: At a campaign event on Tuesday, Trump said that he had spoken to the family of a woman who was allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant.” NBC News. Published April 3rd, 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Landgrave, Michelangelo and Alex Nowrasteh. “Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates, 2010–2023: Legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, and native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants are in the middle.” Policy Analysis No. 994 of the Cato Institute. Published April 24th, 2025. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Library of Congress. “Civil Rights History Project: The Murder of Emmett Till.” n.d. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Light, Michael T.; Jingying He and Jason P. Robey. “Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas.”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117 (51) 32340-32347, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014704117 (2020). Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Open Crime. “Violent Crime Statistics 2026: Comprehensive overview of violent crime in the United States using the latest FBI data.” n.d. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Pitchure, Autumn. “‘I don’t want to die in jail’: Man confesses to murdering girlfriend on US-131.” WWMT News Channel 3 CBS. Published April 12th, 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
Soto, Ariel G. Ruiz. “Explainer: Immigrants and Crime in the United States.” Migration Policy Institute. Published October 2024. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
USA Facts. “What is the crime rate in the US?” n.d. Updated June 5th, 2026. Accessed October 11th, 2026.
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