In a shocking crime that is sure to become a big part of the heated illegal immigration issue, two men who were in the country illegally from Mexico raped and murdered a 64-year-old Air Force veteran with a hammer after breaking into her home in California as she slept — and one of the men accused has a long criminal rap sheet but was never deported.

Santa Maria Police Chief Ralph Martin placed the blame squarely at the door of the Obama Administration as well as state and U.S. legislatures for failing to adequately enforce immigration policies on those with criminal records, according to a Fox News report.

Marilyn Pharis, a 64-year-old veteran of the Air Force was working at a satellite office for Vandenberg Air Force Base, died back on July 24 from the attack. She was supposedly asleep in her home after working the night shift when two men broke in at around 9:45 a.m. They then used a claw hammer to attack her and then strangled her while raping her with a “foreign object,” the report states, before abandoning her to let her die. She was able to call 911, but died later in the hospital.

Police arrested two men: one was 20-year-old Joe Fernando Villagomez, but the one attracting most of the outrage is 29-year-old Victor Aureliano Martinez Ramirez, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had been arrested six times in just the last 15 months — including just eight days prior to the attack.

Despite his rap sheet, the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office (ICE) had declined to seek Ramirez deportation in the past, arguing that he had no prior deportations or felony convictions. But ICE did attempt to deport him in May 2014, and they said they had asked police to notify them before releasing them, which they did not do.