Dem Rep. Nadler pictured with head down, eyes closed during testimony of mothers of migrant crime victims

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Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is under fire after he appeared to close his eyes and bow his head during congressional testimony Tuesday about the impact of migrant crime on victims’ families, prompting criticism that top Democrats are not taking the issue seriously or showing respect for those in mourning.

Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Dan Bishop, R-N.C., lashed out at the top member of the House Judiciary Committee after the incident angered members of the audience.

In the photo, with a box of tissues in the foreground, a staffer next to Nadler is also seen looking at his cell phone as mothers who lost their daughters to alleged foreign rapists and murderers share their traumatic stories of loss with the committee.

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“One of the ladies who went with me took a picture of the Democrats on the other side as we were talking and telling our stories, us, the mothers, mothers crying, telling our stories — and one of them is sleeping and the other one is on his phone,” said Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was brutally raped and murdered after police say an illegal immigrant attacked her on a jogging path near her Maryland home.

Cathie Groenewold, a church friend of Morin’s who took the photo, said she found Nadler’s behavior deeply offensive.

“I was stunned by the lack of care that Jerry Nadler and… the man sitting to his right had,” she told Fox News Digital. “They’re pouring out their hearts, these women, who have lost their children to fentanyl and the most horrific murders you can imagine, and they don’t have the common decency to sit up and give them their undivided attention.”

Nadler and other Democrats appeared to view the hearing as a partisan “stunt,” she said.

“I’m sorry, but these women are drawing attention to a serious problem,” she said. “It’s not a stunt and they weren’t forced to come.”

Morin’s 37-year-old daughter was a mother of five and a small business owner. Her alleged killer is a 23-year-old from El Salvador named Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, who is also suspected of killing another woman in his home country and sexually assaulting a woman and her 9-year-old daughter in a Los Angeles home invasion.

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Prosecutors have accused him of a horrific attack that left Morin with severe head injuries and bruises in Bel Air, about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore. They found her remains in a culvert.

Patty Morin told Fox News Digital after the hearing that she had no intention of being part of a partisan campaign, but that she hoped to convince lawmakers to take immigrant crime seriously.

“This is an American problem, and if we don’t do something, families will be destroyed,” she said. “I don’t want another family, or another mother, to feel the way I did. I can’t describe the pain. And it’s not like it just goes away, like time heals all things. It doesn’t. The pain remains. You just learn to live with the pain.”

FAMILY OF RACHEL MORIN ARGUE BIDEN-HARRIS TO KEEP SILENT ABOUT HER MURDER ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED BY ILLEGAL PERSON

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However, she said she felt her message was not getting through to them.

“It was so discouraging,” she said.

Nadler’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the start of the hearing, the longtime senator from New York expressed his condolences to the witnesses.

“I can’t imagine how difficult this loss has been for you,” he said.

He went on to call the proceedings “another partisan hearing designed to divide us and score political points before the election.”

Of the eight witnesses, four lost their children in connection with the border crisis.

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To Morin’s left was Anne Fundner, whose son Weston died of fentanyl poisoning. She blamed Mexican drug cartels and Chinese chemicals flowing freely across the southern border.

“My son did not have to die,” she told the committee. “His life was cut short because of political decisions — decisions that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, those in positions of power, made.”

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To Morin’s right was Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who authorities say was strangled, bound and sexually assaulted before being thrown from a bridge.

Two illegal immigrants from Venezuela have been charged with premeditated murder in that case.

“Because of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policy of catch and release, they were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program,” Nungaray told lawmakers. “That meant they were released into the United States. It was less than three weeks before they would take the life of my daughter, Jocelyn Nungaray.”

Tammy Nobles also testified about the murder of her daughter, Kayla Hamilton, who was strangled and sexually assaulted in her own bed – at the hands of an MS-13 member who entered the U.S. illegally in 2020.

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The suspect in that case, Walter Javier Martinez, is serving a 70-year prison sentence for the crime and has confessed in writing to four murders and two rapes, Nobles said.

“This is not a political issue, this is a safety issue for everyone who lives here in the United States,” she told the committee. “Not only was Kayla’s life put in danger and taken, but many other children and adults were put in danger as well.”