I just cannot get this off my mind, so I’m just going to lay it out there. Why is this man still in the United States?
This is Gabriel Arteaga, and in 2023, on a rural road in Laurens County, his reckless conduct in driving a vehicle, illegally, caused the death of Maddie Hines of Laurens. He was sentenced, just before Christmas, 2024, to 10 years in prison, and he is serving that sentence now.
Taking up bed space in a South Carolina prison.
He is eligible for release in July, 2028.
He is EXACTLY who President Donald J. Trump says we should be deporting from the United States. His deportation is exactly what 74 MILLION Americans voted for - because President Trump said he was going to see that it got done, violent illegal immigrants OUT of the country, and the White House keeps showing us the violent illegal aliens they are arresting every day in Minneapolis - and, yet, there he sits in our state’s prison.
President Trump re-stated his mass deportation commitment in an interview with NBC, and this quote is among those that the White House sent out today in an e-mail:
On the Trump Administration’s highly successful immigration enforcement: “We are totally focused on criminals — really bad criminals... We have 11,888 murderers that Biden and his group let into our country. We’ve captured a lot of them… We are after those people. We’re after the drug dealers… We’re getting them out.”
Except, they’re not. Instead, the Hines family had to find out this week that Arteaga is eligible for parole (!!). Maddie’s sister. Kinsley, wrote a statement to the parole board, and they denied parole. And, I’m sure, there’s some kind of rigga-my-roll about the 438 days that this guy spent in the Laurens County jail awaiting trial, and his 10-year sentence for reckless homicide is not REALLY 10 years, and he gets credit for “good behavior” and reckless homicide is not really a “violent crime,” and such and such. But, to me, the question remains.
Why is he here?
Our Solicitor David Stumbo, who’s now running for Attorney General, said after the Arteaga verdict that the defendant likely would be deported out of Atlanta after he served his sentence in a South Carolina prison. Now, that looks like it could, maybe, possibly happen in the Summer of 2028.
My point is, why wait? Send him to a Mexican prison where he can serve out his full 10 years.
Just in the interest of fairness, let me give you a portion of my article telling Arteaga’s side of the story when we published it on Dec. 18, 2024:
Defense attorney Zach Farr told the court that Arteaga is 26 years old, entered the U.S. on a work visa, legally, in Florida, moved to South Carolina in 2020, lived in Spartanburg, and has a 9th grade education. Although the defendant did not testify and Farr offered no witnesses, the Defense did present a case by cross-examination. It inferred that Arteaga and a man riding in the truck with him thought they were being chased on Chestnut Ridge Church Road, when they blew through the stop sign at the intersection of Hwy 76, just west of Laurens District High School, at an estimated 48 mph, or more, because the fact that the truck did not have the recommended tires made the speedometer register lower than the actual speed, an investigator said. The Defense case inferred that statements given to the Highway Patrol by a key witness were “not recalled” and the red SUV’s driver and occupants were distracted while driving and riding (that was the vehicle Maddie was riding in). He said The State did not present camera footage from Chestnut Ridge Baptist Church which could have shown how Arteaga was driving the white truck before it came to the intersection where the collision happened.
Farr reminded the jury that the chief medical examiner in this matter ruled Madison’s manner of death accidental, determining her cause of death to be blunt force trauma that separated her brain from her spine. Her heart would have kept beating for a short while, testified Dr. Michael E. Ward, the chief medical examiner of Greenville County.
Farr said this was an accident and “since when are accidents criminalized.”
If you want to see what trauma this local family is still going through, you can go onto Facebook and find Love Like Maddie and ask if you can become a friend to the page. Their post about the parole hearing will break your heart.
And, full disclosure here, I am not a fan of ICE and CBP mass deportation tactics - equally disturbing were the testimonies before a shadow hearing of Congress about the people who have been killed and injured in this “law enforcement” effort. Boots on the ground in Minnesota said thing got much worse when CBP “officers” showed up - they had been sitting at the southern border for 18 months and they were itching to get into the action.
What ICE is doing in Minneapolis is not “law enforcement” - your local police would not act this way, your local Sheriff would be voted out off office for acting this way. Probably the best thing that could happen in Minneapolis and other cities afflicted with ICE is for the Regular Army to move in - Real American Soldiers would never, ever, stand for what these wanna-be “agents” are doing.
And, I have empathy for the voices who say with sincerity that no immigrants should be deported. Mass deportation is going to wreck our economy - you heard Doctor Oz say it just the other day, Real Americans need to start working BEFORE age 17 and continue working AFTER age 65 - it is our Patriotic Duty. Deported immigrants are going back to countries, in some cases, that they have never seen before in their lives. Sanctions and the United States raiding their oil (yes, you, Venezuela and Nigeria) have left these countries on the brink of collapse WITHOUT an influx of more people. We have broken so many countries in the world that we at best have a duty to help put them back together, and at least help them stave off famine.
However, if we have promised the American People that the VIOLENT immigrants will be deported, then we need to make good on that promise. Our ICE and Customs people should go jail by jail, prison by prison, and find them and put them on planes, forth-with, after a hearing before an immigration judge. We should not be firing immigration judges and replacing them with military judges. We should not have massive warehouses filled with immigrants, and citizens caught up in the sweeps.
And, once we find and deport ALL of the violent-crimes illegal aliens - and that includes Mister Arteaga - we should declare “Mission Accomplished” and send ICE home.
They have a job to do at our border with Mexico and our border with Canada. They do not have a role to play at the Winter Olympics in Italy. They do not have a role to play at the ballot boxes in 15 states and cities identified by the White House’s “elections integrity” office. They do not have a role to play guarding the White House on January 20, 2028, and taking up residence in the big, beautiful ballroom.
I really don’t know why this bothers me so much, seeing the Love Like Maddie post that talks about PAROLE for Gabriel Arteaga. I know, in my heart of hearts, that he is a person, too; but maybe it has something to do with watching all the heartache in that courtroom that day. The needless pain. Maybe it’s because he did not testify - did not say anything, in fact. Maybe it has something to do with how courageous the Hines family has been in turning a tragedy into coming-to-Christ moments. I don’t know - I’m not usually like this.
Oh, and while I’m at it, does anybody know if Laken Riley’s killer is still in the United States?
I hope not.
Vic MacDonald is Editor of The Clinton Chronicle. July, 2025, marked his 50th year as a community journalist in South Carolina.
"Totally focused" - President Trump here.
