An illegal immigrant released under former President Biden is charged with killing a 33-year-old Indiana mother in a drunken hit-and-run, a death DHS calls completely avoidable.
Tamara Thomas was waiting in an Indianapolis gas station parking lot for her two brothers to pick her up when a speeding car tore through the lot and struck her. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police later arrested 22-year-old Edwin Alexander Sosa-Gonzalez, a Honduran national who the New York Post reported had entered the country illegally through Texas in July 2021. He was released during the Biden administration after a Border Patrol arrest, and now faces charges in the fatal crash.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the case shows the human cost of prior border policy. ICE lodged a detainer the day after the crash and asked Indiana officials to hold the suspect.
According to police documents reviewed by local outlets, Sosa-Gonzalez was speeding in a gray Honda CR-V when he hit another car. The impact forced his vehicle over curbs and into Thomas as she tried to get to safety.
He fled the scene. Officers took him into custody hours later. Documents said he smelled of alcohol, stumbled, and slurred his words. His blood-alcohol level measured 0.229, nearly three times Indiana’s legal limit.
Prosecutors charged him with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident that caused death or catastrophic injury, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death.
Similar crashes have left other American families grieving after encounters with illegal immigrants who should never have been free to drive on U.S. roads, including cases where an illegal immigrant flees ICE and slams into civilians.
This was not Sosa-Gonzalez’s first brush with American law enforcement. In February 2024 he was arrested for driving while intoxicated and for driving without ever obtaining a license. He was placed in ICE custody at that time.
Yet he was back behind the wheel in Indianapolis, allegedly drunk again, when Thomas was killed. Mullin tied the outcome directly to the earlier decision to release him into the country.
Mullin said:
"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."
He added that ICE has lodged a detainer “asking officials in Indiana to cooperate with us and make sure this killer never gets back onto the streets again.”
Mullin went further on the policy failure:
"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. My thoughts and prayers are with Tamara’s family and friends."
Families across the country have watched the same pattern: illegal immigrants with prior arrests or ICE contact remain free until a preventable crime claims another life. In one recent Illinois case, ICE agents arrested an illegal immigrant already convicted of violent crimes against a child, along with other convicted offenders.
Tommy Thomas, Tamara’s father, said his daughter had struggled for years. She dropped out before seventh grade, battled drugs, and had recently started getting clean. She was a mother to a young son.
He told reporters he had long feared a different kind of phone call.
"There was a long time that I really thought I was going to get a call that she was gone, and it was going to be because of a drug overdose."
Instead came news of a hit-and-run. He said:
"It wasn’t even the drugs or the normal sideshow of people that she hangs out with on a daily basis."
And he added a painful wish:
"And I hate to say it, but I wish it had been an overdose. I hate to know how much pain, if any, that she went through, you know, pinned underneath that car, and when that guy hit her."
Tommy Thomas also owned his own past. He had served time for dealing LSD and said he might have played a role in the hard path his daughter walked. Still, he insisted the crash itself never should have happened.
"It should’ve never happened. My daughter’s had a crap life. I might have had some part in that at one point in time."
He vowed to give her the best burial he could and said that if she is cremated he wants to scatter her ashes in Hawaii.
Local leaders elsewhere have begun speaking more bluntly when illegal immigrants kill or injure Americans in traffic cases, including a Jackson mayor calling out sanctuary rules after an infant died in a crash tied to an illegal immigrant.
Sosa-Gonzalez entered illegally in July 2021, was arrested by Border Patrol, and was released into the United States under Biden-era practices. He later drew a DUI and unlicensed-driving arrest, spent time in ICE custody, and still ended up free to drive drunk through an Indianapolis parking lot.
Thomas was 33. She was standing in a place ordinary people stand every day, waiting for a ride. A man who never should have been at liberty in this country allegedly chose to drink, speed, hit her, and run.
ICE now wants him held so he cannot return to the street. The charges are serious. None of that restores a mother to her child or a daughter to her father.
Open-border leniency does not stay abstract. It shows up in parking lots, on highways, and in funeral plans made by parents who never got the chance to see their kids get fully clean and whole. Lawful residents deserve a system that removes repeat illegal offenders before the next preventable funeral.