Opinion | My Wife’s Killer Was Not an ‘Illegal Immigrant’ (Published 2016) (2024)

On Nov. 1, 2006, I found my wife, Adrienne Shelly, dead in her West Village office. Adrienne, an actor and filmmaker, had been brutally murdered by a 19-year-old undocumented Ecuadorean construction worker; he later said they were having an argument and, fearing she would report him and have him deported, he killed her and staged her death so it would appear to be a suicide. Our daughter was just 2 years old at the time.

Given the anger and grief I still feel, I could easily be seduced by Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric that is the cornerstone of his presidential run. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said as he began his campaign in 2015. And in these final weeks before the election, rather than tacking to the middle, he seems to be doubling down. “We’ve got some bad hombres,” he said in last week’s debate, referring to immigrants who commit crimes.

And it’s not just Mr. Trump. In the years since Adrienne’s murder I’ve received several offers from prominent members of the conservative media, including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly, to speak out on this issue and give legitimacy to right-wing anti-immigrant sentiment. Who better than a Democrat to attack an entire segment of our population, right?

But Adrienne was not murdered by an illegal immigrant, per se. She fell victim to a depraved killer who simply happened to be an undocumented immigrant. It is an obvious distinction, almost too obvious, but it’s an important one to consider as the country goes further down the dangerous path of demonizing those not born here.

At his rallies and during the debates, Mr. Trump has painted a dark picture of an America overrun by foreign criminals who come here to rape, pillage and murder our innocent civilians. He opposes any form of amnesty for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, taking a hard-line law-and-order stand that has brought millions of voters to his camp.

He uses murders like Adrienne’s — though never hers specifically, fortunately — as political props. His “solution” includes a deportation force that would separate people from their families and “send them back to wherever they came from.”