An illegal immigrant from Guatemala named Sebastian Zapeta burned a young woman to death on a New York subway the other day. He had no business being in the United States after being deported in 2018, but there he was — taking a torch to a completely innocent woman whom he did not know. Worse, he stayed at the crime scene and literally fanned the flames as she burned.

Most of the social media stories are focused on the gruesome videos taken by eyewitnesses. They show the woman standing inside a subway car, leaning against a back wall, engulfed in shooting flames from head to toe. It’s clear she is still alive because her body is moving, yet everyone just stands there watching; nobody helps her. At one point a cop walks by the inferno at the nonchalant pace of a guy thinking about dinner, eyes averted from the grisly scene.

Question all you want the capacity of people to take videos of human depravity while doing nothing to help, and then uploading them to the internet for a few clicks. Humanity at its worst sells — especially when there’s a video. Shame on all of us who couldn’t stop watching. We risk becoming immune to the suffering of others if we stare because it’s gory. In turn, we learn to look away because it isn’t as awful the second time. But if we don’t watch, we won’t rise up in anger and hold government officials accountable for creating the conditions that led to such monstrous behavior.

Lax immigration policies didn’t cause Zapeta to roast a woman to death, but it’s undeniable that tougher immigration policies would have at least kept this particular beast out of our country. Maybe someone else would have done the same thing, and maybe it would have been a U.S. citizen, but it would not have been this man, on this day, in this subway, killing this woman. We have a right to point out that illegal immigrants cannot commit crimes in this country if they aren’t here.

Our charge now is to highlight Zapeta’s barbarism when we talk about immigration. No doubt President Trump will prop Zapeta up when he announces his deportation plans next year. Some will call Trump a bully, but they cannot dismiss Zapeta as irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that American citizens commit the most crimes. The question is whether tougher immigration policies, such as better screening of people who want to come to this country and faster deportation proceedings for those who commit crimes when they get here, will stop some crimes. It isn’t asking a lot to have a little quality control at the border.

If Trump is wise, he will emphasize the immediate need for more law enforcement oversight of illegal immigrants because of the risk that some will go out of their way to commit especially horrific crimes to avoid deportation. Sounds strange but they know Trump is on his way in, which means they are on their way out. One way to stay in this country illegally is to commit a crime that carries a life sentence. Four squares, a bed, and a TV — even behind bars — is tolerable if back home offers only a mud hut and gruel for dinner.

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Zapeta may not be an example of this phenomenon, but there will be a spike in serious crimes by illegal immigrants in the next few months, and we need to be prepared. In fact, Trump may want to announce sooner than later that he will deport rather than prosecute illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes as a way of eliminating this perverse incentive, even though it will deprive victims and their families of justice in American courts.

It’s hard to believe a person would commit murder to avoid deportation — and bite your tongue if you’re thinking that this proves how desperately people want to come to the United States. If a man would torch a woman to death in order to spend his life in an American prison, he is exactly the type of person who should live in a mud hut eating gruel.