Joseph Manfredi, 27, had served in the United States Marine Corps. In March someone shot him to death at a construction site in St. Johns County, Florida, leaving behind a wife and two small children. A report by John Binder at Breitbart states that the two men now charged in the killing had each entered the country unlawfully and were released into the interior during the Obama administration.
According to investigators, the deadly clash began when Yovany Lopez Cobo, 20, a national of Guatemala, insulted Manfredi’s wife as the crew worked. The confrontation turned physical, and police say Lopez Cobo produced a gun, killed Manfredi, and wounded two coworkers before fleeing. Only a day later, the sheriff’s office filed a charge of second degree murder against him. Not long after, his brother, Armando Lopez Cobo, 23, was named an accessory.
Left behind are Manfredi’s wife, Hailee, and their two children, Blaine and Amelia. Well-wishers have started a fundraiser to help them. His obituary captures what he treasured most of all.
“Above all else, Joseph’s greatest joy and purpose in life was his family. He was a loving and devoted husband to his high school sweetheart and wife of five years, Hailee Manfredi, and a proud and caring father to their two children, Blaine and Amelia. Being a husband and father was the role he cherished most, and he poured his heart into creating a life full of love, laughter, and lasting memories.”
This week, Border Hawk reported that the siblings had come across as Unaccompanied Alien Children in 2016 before being released into the country by federal officials. The courts had already ruled that they had to go. A deportation order landed against Armando in 2018 and against Yovany in 2025. Yet those orders were never acted on, and neither man was arrested or removed.
Officials at Homeland Security spoke plainly:
“These criminal illegal aliens from Guatemala both came to our nation illegally and were released by the Obama Administration. Now Joseph Manfredi, a husband and a father, is dead because of these monsters who never should have been in our country.”
The department says Immigration and Customs Enforcement has now filed detainers on the pair, ensuring they will not walk free from custody once the police are finished with them.
Two men had been formally told by a judge to leave the country, one of them all the way back in 2018, and still they roamed free enough to turn up at that work site. A man who once served in uniform now lies buried because those removal orders were shrugged off as optional, and for as long as the borders remain wide open, another household somewhere is being lined up for the identical heartbreak. In a sane America First order, immigration must be halted completely, since any country that refuses to remove even those it has already condemned to removal has no business ushering in anyone new.
