A 20-year-old illegal immigrant who never held a driver's license struck and killed a baby in a New Jersey grocery store parking lot, and the car's owner, also an illegal immigrant, faces charges too.
María Cobon-Guzmán was behind the wheel of a Ford Fusion on August 28 when she hit Golda Chana, who was pushing her 9-month-old son Yitzchok Rosenberg in a stroller through a supermarket parking lot in Jackson, New Jersey. Chana's 5-year-old daughter was also struck. All three were rushed to Jersey Shore University Medical Center. Yitzchok died there.
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office charged Cobon-Guzmán with five counts, including manslaughter. The car's owner, 22-year-old Ariadna Lazaro-Flores, was charged with knowingly creating a substantial risk of death for letting Cobon-Guzmán drive. Judge Kimarie Rahill denied bail for both women. And both now face ICE detainers and deportation proceedings, the New York Post reported.
A Department of Homeland Security official told Fox News Digital that both Cobon-Guzmán and Lazaro-Flores crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally during the Biden administration. Cobon-Guzmán entered the country once and was released. She has never held a driver's license.
Lazaro-Flores's history is even more striking. The DHS official said she crossed the border illegally five separate times in October 2023 alone. She was removed from the country after each crossing, and came back every time.
Five illegal crossings. Five removals. And she still ended up living in Toms River, New Jersey, with a car registered in her name and, according to Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a driver's license. Cobon-Guzmán, a Guatemalan national, was living in Trenton.
An immigration judge had already approved a deportation order for Cobon-Guzmán on July 31, less than a month before the crash that killed Yitzchok Rosenberg. She was still in the country on August 28.
Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, told Fox News Digital he has called for the removal of New Jersey's sanctuary status, which limits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration agencies. He pointed to one detail in particular: Lazaro-Flores, a Mexican national who was removed from the country five times, managed to secure a driver's license.
Smith's reaction was blunt. As he told Fox News Digital:
"That is shocking."
How Lazaro-Flores obtained that license, which state agency issued it, and under what policy, remains unanswered. Several states, including New Jersey, have enacted laws allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver's licenses. But the gap between five border removals in a single month and a valid state-issued license sitting in someone's wallet raises a question that no official quoted in the reporting has yet addressed.
Both Cobon-Guzmán and Lazaro-Flores are being held without bail. Ocean County Jail records show ICE has filed detainers against both, meaning federal immigration authorities have formally requested that the jail hold the women for transfer into federal custody once their state criminal cases allow it.
The charges against Cobon-Guzmán include manslaughter. The prosecutor's office has not publicly detailed the other four counts. Lazaro-Flores faces a charge described as knowingly creating a substantial risk of death, a charge rooted in her decision to hand her car keys to someone who had no license and no legal right to be in the country.
Golda Chana and her 5-year-old daughter survived, but the extent of their injuries has not been disclosed. The family was doing nothing more dangerous than walking through a grocery store parking lot.
The timeline tells the story plainly enough. In October 2023, Lazaro-Flores was caught crossing the border illegally five times and removed five times. By some point after that, she was living in New Jersey with a car and a license. Cobon-Guzmán entered the country once, was released, and by July 31 had a deportation order approved against her. Twenty-eight days later, she was driving a car she had no license to operate, in a country she had been ordered to leave, through a parking lot where a mother was pushing a stroller.
Yitzchok Rosenberg was nine months old.
Every layer of enforcement that was supposed to prevent this outcome failed. The border did not hold. The removals did not stick. The deportation order was not executed. A state that limits cooperation with federal immigration authorities issued a license to someone removed from the country five times. And a woman under a deportation order sat behind the wheel of a car she could not legally drive.
When the people who create the policies never have to live with the consequences, the policies tend to stay exactly as they are. The people in that parking lot did not have that luxury.
