On January 30, 75-year-old cattle rancher George Alan Kelly had clearly had enough of the illegal migrants streaming through his property in Arizona near the Mexican border. He broke out his AK-47 and fired several warning shots over the heads of a group of migrants but one shot struck a migrant, killing him. Kelly was arrested and sent to trial on charges of second-degree murder. Yesterday, after a few days of deliberation, the jury was declared to be deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. There is not yet any word on whether the prosecution will attempt another trial in an effort to obtain a conviction, but for now, he remains free on a 1 million dollar bond. 

An Arizona judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case of a rancher accused of fatally shooting a Mexican man on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The decision came after jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision after more than two full days of deliberation in the trial of George Alan Kelly, 75.

Kelly was charged with second-degree murder in the Jan. 30, 2023, shooting of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, 48, who lived just south of the border in Nogales, Mexico.

The migrant that George Kelly shot, Bagriel Cuen-Buitmea, was a repeat offender. He had previously been deported five times, with the last incident occurring in 2016. He and the other migrants in the group claimed that they had entered the country illegally to seek work. 

If you find yourself feeling a bit conflicted about this shooting and the subsequent trial, you're not alone. On the one hand, civilians are not supposed to take the law into their own hands and shoot people when they are not facing an immediate threat of danger. Even if Kelly was only firing warning shots as he claimed and this was an accident, it was still a case of poor and dangerous handling of a firearm at a minimum.

Yet at the same time, it's difficult not to see George Kelly as a rather sympathetic figure. He lives on the front lines of the Biden border crisis and his land is invaded on a daily basis. Border officials are either unwilling or unable to help him. After several years of living under this threat, he may have finally said to himself that enough was enough and he would protect his property if his government wasn't going to do it.

This situation is reminiscent of reactions to the ongoing, violent pro-Hamas protests. Senator Tom Cotton was recently criticized for saying that law-abiding people may have to "take matters into their own hands." Under normal circumstances, that would be poor advice because such matters are best left to trained law enforcement officials. But we are living through times that are far from normal. When someone is constantly being plagued by criminal activity as Mr. Kelly's family has been and the government is unable to stop the perpetrators, at some point even the law-abiding may be compelled to step up and do what is required.

In the end, this situation isn't really the fault of George Kelly or the Border Patrol. It's not even entirely the fault of the migrants. It's the fault of Joe Biden and his destructive open border policies. We had months during the Trump administration where there were fewer than a couple of dozen migrants detained when attempting to cross the border illegally. Now we routinely have months where the number is in the tens of thousands. There is no sign of the cavalry riding to the rescue. Should we really be surprised if more property owners on the border begin taking action on their own?