Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts met with the family of Sarah Root in Omaha on Monday. Root was killed in 2016 when a drunken driver who was in the country illegally struck her vehicle from behind.
Her family for more than a decade has advocated for stricter laws around illegal immigration.
“As a father of three I can only imagine the heartbreak that you went through when Sarah was killed,” Ricketts said. “As the secretary said, one person dead because an illegal immigrant came here is one too many.”
Root had just graduated from Bellevue University when she was struck from behind by Eswin Mejia at 33rd and L streets at a high rate of speed. Soon after the crash, a relative of Mejia’s posted his $5,000 bond and he fled to Honduras. In spring 2025, he was tracked down and brought back to Omaha to face criminal charges.
Root was an organ donor, so she was on life support for four days prior to her death, her mother, Michelle Root, said at a press conference in the Department of Homeland Security’s Omaha office. Early this year Mejia was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison.
“As we’ve said, it doesn’t bring Sarah back, but it does close that chapter,” Michelle Root said, “and it lifts the weight off of our shoulders because we fought long and hard to make this a reality to get justice for Sarah.”
Sarah’s Law was passed in early 2025. It requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants charged with crimes causing death or serious bodily injury.
In addition to meeting with the Root family, Mullin sat down with Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton and local emergency crews for a roundtable at the Omaha Fire Department downtown.
Mullin said the goal of the meeting was to hear directly from the people on the ground how to better disperse federal resources.
“We know any time the federal government is involved in something, it’s almost guaranteed to be twice as much,” Mullin said. “If we can get that dollar to the local governments, allow them to spend it, allow them to contract it. It’ll go farther and be more efficient.”
On Friday, a federal judge determined that the Trump administration broke the law when it attempted to cut FEMA’s workforce.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the Department of Homeland Security violated a federal law established after Hurricane Katrina that said the department “may not substantially or significantly reduce … the authorities, responsibilities, or functions of” FEMA.
Asked about the ruling, Mullin said, “It’s not always personnel that you need, it’s efficiency that you need.”
“When some federal judge comes in and tells us how many people we have to have on staff, yet they’re not in the building, they’re not running the agency, it is laughable,” he added. “Stay in your lane, deal with law, prosecute criminals, don’t get into the hiring and firing of an agency or a private company.”