This week, Patricia Fox stood before the House Judiciary Committees Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee and told lawmakers what sanctuary policies actually cost a family.
“My daughter, Carissa, was hit on March 28, 2025, by an illegal alien,” she testified. “She was launched head first into a concrete barrier. The driver and passengers of the vehicle fled. Never checking to see if my daughter was alive.” She continued: “Despite her initial prognosis, Carissa survived. Praise God. But survived and recovered are not the same.”
Sanctuary city and sanctuary state policies have been championed from coast to coast as the most compassionate, resolute action a city or state can take. But, no one has really asked what they cost the citizens who actually live there. Patricia Fox paid the ultimate price for sanctuary policies in Colorado.
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Carissa Aspnes was 22 years old and celebrating a new start. She had just returned home to Aurora, Colorado, from Chicago to launch a career as an esthetician, and on March 28, 2025, she climbed onto the back of a motorcycle to mark her birthday. Minutes later, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, Valeria De Los Angeles Bermudez Marcano, ran a stop sign, crossed three lanes of traffic and slammed into the motorcycle. She and her passengers fled the scene, leaving Carissa unconscious on the road without checking whether she was alive.
Carissa survived. However, 18 months later, her mother is still living what survival actually looks like. Carissa underwent emergency surgery to remove part of her skull and relieve brain swelling. She is now minimally conscious, nonverbal, wheelchair-bound and fed through a G-tube. “Every morning, I use a Hoyer lift to raise my adult daughter out of bed because she cant sit up, stand or get herself up,” Patricia testified.
Carissa’s physician says she needs two people to safely assist her. “Colorado Medicaid denied us in-home nursing,” Patricia said. “So I figure it out.” Medicaid denied the wheelchair Carissa actually needs, too. So Patricia blends her daughters food, feeds her through the tube, brushes her teeth, bathes her and administers her medications, all while learning to read pain in a daughter who can no longer tell her where it hurts.
The financial toll is staggering. Between emergency surgery, rehabilitation and the $3,000 to $4,000 a month in ongoing therapy, equipment, and care that insurance routinely denies, Patricia says Carissas medical bills already total seven figures. She has been trying to raise money to cover those expenses through a GoFundMe campaign. And the toll isnt only financial. Patricias 19-year-old daughter has already begun preparing for the day she and her older brother must take over Carissas care. At 19, her future has been rewritten by a crash she had nothing to do with.
“One collision created an entire f
