Patricia Morin, whose daughter was murdered, reveals her own story of abduction and assault almost 50 years ago, during testimony Sept. 10 to the House Judiciary Committee. Screengrab from committee video.
The mother of Bel Air murder victim Rachel Morin called on Capitol Hill lawmakers Tuesday to close the border, even as she tearfully shared the story for the first time of her own abduction and assault as a teenager in the 1970s.
Patricia Morin told the House Judiciary Committee the story of a 14-year-old girl, abducted from her home by a criminally insane man and forced to walk 60 miles, without food or water, and “at night she was raped multiple times.”
“I’m that teenager,” Morin said , choking up. “And I can tell you that what I suffered as a teenager at the hands of a criminally insane man is nothing compared to the horrors that my daughter suffered.”
Morin’s daughter was raped and murdered in August 2023 on a trail near her Harford County home, a crime that an undocmented migrant has been charged with. Patricia Morin was one of a number of witnesses — along with Tammy Nobles, whose daughter, Kayla Hamilton, was murdered in Aberdeen in 2022 — testifying about crimes committed by undocumented migrants.
Democrats on the committee said the hearing , titled “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives,” was little more than a partisan attempt by Republicans to attack the administration during the election, and accused the GOP of exploiting the victims — which drew angry responses from some of the witnesses.
“Instead of working in a bipartisan fashion to find meaningful solutions to our broken immigration system, we are sitting in yet one more partisan hearing designed to divide us and to score political points before an election,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the senior Democrat on the committee.
“In fact, one of our Republican colleagues said the quiet part out loud last week when he said in this season, quote, these are messaging hearings that we’ve been doing,” Nadler said. “With only eight weeks until Election Day, our Republican colleagues are trying to do everything they can to blame Vice President [Kamala] Harris for what they now call the Biden-Harris border crisis.”
Nadler and other Democrats all extended condolences to the witnesses but tried to press the point that migrants are no more likely — and are probably less likely — to commit crimes than U.S. citizens. They also said Harris was never the administration’s “border czar” that Republicans have called her, that border crossings are at their lowest point in four years and that the border has been in crisis for decades through the past several administrations – including Trump’s.
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They noted that there was no legislation before Tuesday’s hearing and that a bipartisan immigration reform bill crafted in the Senate earlier this year was scuttled by former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee who debated Democratic nominee Harris Tuesday night.
That was a hard sell, however, against the witnesses and their tales of violent crime and drug overdoses caused by fentanyl. Every one of them blamed the “Biden-Harris open border policy” for their troubles, even as most said the issue is not political issue but is one of protecting Americans.
Nobles told the story of her 20-year-old daughter, Kayla, who was strangled and raped in her Aberdeen mobile home in July 2022 by an undocumented migrant teen who had arrived in the country only months before and was sent to Maryland to live with a sponsor. She said Kayla’s killer, Walter Javier Martinez, had been a member of the MS-13 gang in his native El Salvador and pleaded guilty after a letter was intercepted in which he claimed to have committed other murders.
Morin abandoned her written testimony to “share from my heart.”
Her daughter, then 37, a mother of five, went for a run on the Ma & Pa Trail on Aug. 5, 2023, but did not come home. When she was found the next day, she had been raped and murdered, had “bruises that blanketed her body, she had 10 to 15 head wounds and she was stuffed into a drainpipe,” Morin said.
Police arrested Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, 23, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in July, after DNA evidence from another crime in California linked him to Morin’s murder.
While she conceded that attacker almost 50 years ago was a citizen, Morin said illegal immigration must be stopped so that others don’t suffer as her daughter did.
“I realize some of you are disinterested because you think this is just a partisan thing,” Morin told the committee. “We need to close the borders. These people that are coming over the border, if they’re coming illegally it’s because they have something to hide.”
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-4th), like Morin, put his prepared statement aside to speak to the witnesses “who are survivors.”
“One of the things I’d like to say to you all is I deeply respect the mantle you’re taking up today. You’re able to speak with a moral authority that politicians like me really can’t,” he said.
He told of his background as Prince George’s County state’s attorney, beginning in 2003, when he was exposed to the “extremely violent” MS-13 gang, which was operating in the Washington area. He noted that that was during the administration of President George W. Bush, and that there was a problem even then of immigrants who committed crimes here being deported and then just finding their way back across border.
He also read part of a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee and part of the conservative majority on the court, who wrote that the last five presidents have not had the resources necessary to arrest or deport all the noncitizens in the country.
“Five administrations have come and gone, we’ve not gotten things done. We’re not going to get anything done today from a legislative standpoint, but there’s a way to get it done if we can come together and work in a bipartisan way and do it,” said Ivey, noting the partisan divide in Congress and the looming election.
He then said he hoped that both sides could “beyond the partisanship” to find solutions, and urged the witnesses to keep advocating toward that goal.
“Beyond this election cycle … there’s going to be more opportunities for you to use your voices and your platforms to address these kinds of issues,” Ivey said. “I know that there’s truth on both sides of this issue and there’s a way that we can get to a place where we can resolve it, but won’t do it in a partisan way.”
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