A baby boy is dead and his mother and sister are hospitalized after an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, already under a federal deportation order, allegedly drove into the family outside a New Jersey grocery store, and the state's sanctuary policies may block ICE from taking custody.
Maria Cobon-Guzman, 20, faces a manslaughter charge after she allegedly drove a car into a mother pushing a baby carriage through the parking lot of NPGS grocery store in Jackson Township, New Jersey, on Friday. The 9-month-old boy in the carriage was rushed to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where he was pronounced dead. His mother and 5-year-old sister were also struck and remained hospitalized in stable condition.
Cobon-Guzman had never held a valid driver's license in New Jersey or any other state, the New York Post reported. A second woman, Ariadna Lazaro-Flores, 22, also an illegal immigrant, was charged with endangering the welfare of an incompetent person for allegedly letting Cobon-Guzman drive her car while knowing she was unlicensed.
Both women are being held at the Ocean County Jail. ICE has filed detainers on both, formal requests to hold them for federal immigration authorities. But whether New Jersey will honor those detainers is an open question, because Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill signed legislation codifying the state's Immigrant Trust Directive, which limits the voluntary assistance New Jersey law enforcement may provide to the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS provided Fox News Digital with the immigration histories of both women. Cobon-Guzman illegally crossed the southern border once, in 2023, and was released unvetted into the interior under the Biden administration. On July 31, less than a month before the fatal crash, an immigration judge issued an order of removal against her. She was still in the country on Friday when she allegedly got behind the wheel of Lazaro-Flores's car.
Lazaro-Flores's record is even more striking. DHS said she illegally entered the United States five separate times in October 2023 alone and was removed each time. A DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital that she "last illegally entered the United States through the Biden Administration's open border at an unknown place and time."
Five entries and five removals in a single month, and she was still here.
A DHS spokesperson did not hold back in a statement to Fox News Digital:
"An innocent baby would still be alive today had it not been for Joe Biden's disastrous open border and reckless immigration policy that released countless illegal aliens into our country."
The spokesperson added that DHS was "urging the Ocean County Jail to honor ICE's detainers on these two criminal illegal aliens to take them out of American communities once and for all." The agency repeated the demand on social media, posting that "New Jersey must honor ICE's detainers" on the two women.
Ocean County sits in a Republican-friendly pocket of an otherwise blue state. Whether the county jail will comply with the federal request, or defer to the statewide sanctuary framework, remained unclear as of Tuesday morning.
Governor Sherrill had not commented publicly on the baby's death as of Tuesday morning. Her spokesman directed Fox News Digital to Attorney General Jennifer Davenport for comment. Davenport did not immediately respond.
The governor's silence drew pointed criticism online. While Sherrill had posted on social media about other subjects, including a critique of President Trump's dealings with Iran, residents pushed back. One commenter asked, "How about sticking to doing something about the highest property taxes in the US [or] stopping illegals from killing and maiming us?" Another simply wrote, "Any comment yet? Hello?"
The New Jersey Republican Party issued a formal statement that framed the case as a direct test of Sherrill's priorities:
"An innocent baby is dead. A mother and another child were seriously injured. Now, ICE is seeking custody of the two women charged in connection with the crash."
The statement continued:
"This should not be complicated: New Jersey must comply with ICE detainers. Governor Sherrill has a responsibility to put the safety of New Jersey families ahead of sanctuary policies. When federal immigration authorities seek custody of individuals charged with serious crimes, the state should cooperate, not stand in the way."
The Immigrant Trust Directive was originally drafted by former Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. It restricts how much help state and local law enforcement can voluntarily offer federal immigration authorities. Sherrill went further by signing the directive into law, making it harder for a future governor to reverse with a simple executive order.
The directive's defenders argue it encourages immigrant communities to cooperate with local police without fear of deportation. But cases like this one expose the policy's downstream cost: a woman who had already been ordered deported was free to walk into a parking lot, get behind the wheel of a car she was not licensed to drive, and, allegedly, end a baby's life.
Breitbart reported that Cobon-Guzman had been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge less than a month before the fatal crash, underscoring the gap between the court's order and any actual enforcement on the ground.
The names of the mother, the 9-month-old boy, and the 5-year-old girl have not been released. What is known is that a mother took her two children to a grocery store on a Friday, and one of them came home in a body bag.
Several questions remain unanswered. Will Ocean County honor the ICE detainers, or will the state's sanctuary law prevail? Will Sherrill address the case publicly? And how did a woman with an active removal order, issued just weeks earlier, remain free to drive a car through a parking lot full of families?
Sanctuary policies are built on abstractions about trust and community. The cost is measured in specifics, in this case, a 9-month-old boy who never got the chance to walk.
