The mother of murdered Maryland mom Rachel Morin told lawmakers Wednesday that neither President Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have spoken with her or expressed remorse over their immigration policies following her daughter’s killing.
“Since my daughter’s death, but also since that we learned that it was an illegal immigrant that they’ve accused of murdering her, the Biden-Harris administration has not reached out to our family to offer condolences,” Patty Morin told members of the House Homeland Security Committee in a hearing on the US border crisis.
“And I’ve noticed that when speaking about the border policy, they would rather look in the other direction, kind of like a little kid,” Morin went on. “You know, ‘If I don’t see you, you don’t see me.’”
“I think that they are trying to avoid admitting that there is an issue,” she added.
Authorities say Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five, was savagely beaten and strangled to death in August 2023 by Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a migrant from El Salvador with gang ties.
The 23-year-old Martinez Hernandez illegally entered the US in February 2023, authorities say, but wasn’t caught after allegedly murdering Morin until June 2024, when cops matched his DNA to the gruesome crime scene.
Authorities also said Martinez Hernandez allegedly murdered a young woman in El Salvador before fleeing his home country — and went on to attack a 9-year-old girl and her mom while invading their home in Los Angeles in March 2023.
Martinez Hernandez was arrested at a bar in Tulsa, Okla., on June 14, 2023, and later extradited to Maryland. He is facing first-degree murder and first-degree rape charges in Rachel’s death.
The Morin family believes the suspect had “more victims” as he roamed the US, and have repeatedly criticized the administration for failing to protect Americans from dangerous migrants.
“My sister’s death was preventable,” Michael Morin, Rachel’s brother, said in a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, adding that despite silence from Biden and Harris, former President Donald Trump had reached out to offer condolences.
“He wanted to meet with us. He cared,” Michael Morin told the RNC delegates. “That is leadership. We need real leadership back in the White House.”
Congressional Republicans have focused on the tragic cases of Morin and other innocent women and girls allegedly slain by migrants, like Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, to highlight the Harris-Biden administration’s failure to properly vet the millions coming into the country.
“It’s not just the southern border, because we’re almost 2,000 miles from the southern border,” said Patty Morin, referencing her daughter’s Maryland hometown.
“It’s every state, every county, every city,” she added. “People are living in fear, and just because you ignore it and don’t acknowledge doesn’t mean that it’s not true.”
Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) called the “flood of inadmissible aliens across our sovereign borders … unprecedented” in his opening remarks.
“Since Biden and Harris’ first full month in office, Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 10.3 million encounters of inadmissible aliens nationwide, compared to 3.1 million between Fiscal Years 2017-2020,” Green said.
“That’s largely because the Biden-Harris administration has devised a host of unlawful, mass-parole programs that encourage otherwise-inadmissible aliens to cross at our land, sea, and airports instead of between them,” he added.
“As we continue to witness Biden and Harris’ resistance to doing anything meaningful about this disaster, we have to ask—why? Why did they let this crisis take place and why have they let it continue?”