Rachel Morin’s mother testifies before Congress on border policy in emotional hearing

A grieving mother told the heartbreaking story of her daughter’s murder during a congressional hearing on immigration and border security on Wednesday.

Rachel Morin, a mother of five from Maryland, was found raped and murdered on a popular trail in August 2023.

The victim’s mother, Patty Morin, told lawmakers her family has walked that path for more than 25 years.

“She grew up walking this path,” Patty Morin said of her daughter. “We were told her body was covered in bruises, and I can tell you, when I looked at her when I went to the funeral home, it was probably the most graphic thing I’ve ever seen.”

It took 10 months for authorities to track down the suspect, Victor Martinez Hernandez, who entered the country illegally in early 2023.

Patty Morin said police found her daughter’s suspected killer through DNA testing because he also allegedly attacked a child and her mother in California.

“If they had followed the border protocols that were in place — just a simple DNA swab — they would have known that he had an Interpol warrant for murder in his home country,” Patty Morin said. “That’s why he fled to the United States. They say the borders are safe. We’re 1,800 miles from the southern border. They’re not safe.”

Patty Morin, who also testified before the House Judiciary Committee this month, was one of four witnesses at the House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.

She was accompanied by San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, retired Border Patrol officer Aaron Heitke and Arizona Sheriff David Hathaway.

Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, said the purpose of the hearing was to examine President Joe Biden’s border policies and “how they have undermined America’s safety and security.”

Green said we are now facing the worst border crisis in American history.

He accused the government of pursuing a mass catch-and-release policy, encouraging gangs and costing states and cities billions of dollars.

Green said there is a “national security, public safety and humanitarian disaster on our borders.”

Since Biden’s first full month in office, Customs and Border Protection has recorded 10.3 million encounters with inadmissible immigrants, Green said, compared with 3.1 million between fiscal years 2017 and 2020.

The Republican committee chairman said there have been 2 million known “escapes” under Biden’s administration.

Mass release programs offer a solution to overcrowded border facilities, but result in millions of immigrants being allowed into the country, he said.

Green called it an “empty-handed game.”

Green said the number of arrests of immigrants with criminal records by Border Patrol has more than doubled.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, urged lawmakers to be careful about the rhetoric they use to discuss immigration and border security.

Thompson cited the dozens of bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio, after former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, spread unsubstantiated rumors about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets there.

Thompson cited an attack five years ago that targeted a Hispanic community at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, by a self-described white nationalist. He cited the attack that claimed 10 lives in a predominantly black community in Buffalo, New York, and the deadly anti-Semitic attack in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which left 11 people dead.

“Anti-immigrant rhetoric and racist tropes have no place in our public discourse,” Thompson said. “They are un-American and have too often helped fuel real-world violence against immigrant and minority communities across the country.”

Thompson said that since Biden announced new measures to secure the border in June, encounters along the border and at ports of entry have decreased by 55%. Border Patrol recorded its lowest number of border encounters since September 2020, he said.

Biden has returned more than 92,000 immigrants to more than 130 countries and conducted more than 300 international repatriation flights, Thompson said.

The Democratic lawmaker said the total number of evictions and remands last year was higher than the total number of evictions and remands in any year since 2010.

According to Thompson, none of the Biden administration’s actions are a substitute for action by Congress.

“It is our responsibility to take action,” to fix what Thompson called a “broken immigration system” and provide more resources for border security.

Heitke, the retired chief patrol agent, told lawmakers that the only real consequence we have to deter people from entering the U.S. illegally is to send them back to their home countries. But he said he’s seen a steady decline in the countries we can send people to in recent years.

“For the first time in my 25 years, and under five different administrations, whether by negligence or by design, I saw a large-scale failure in our ability to return people to their countries of origin,” he testified.

Because people could not be sent back to their countries, most immigrants would be detained or released in the U.S., he said.

Heitke said the Biden administration has reduced the amount of detention space. And as word spread in other countries that immigrants were being released into the U.S., more came, he said.

“When this happened, the number of people that Border Patrol saw crossing the border illegally increased exponentially,” Heitke said. “The impact on me and my agents was significant.”

Border Patrol units were ordered to take in any immigrants they encountered, he said.

Border agents have seen groups of hundreds and thousands of people enter the U.S. and turn themselves in, keeping 80 percent or more of the agents on duty across the border.

In some border areas, there were no officers present for weeks and months, he said.

“Anyone who didn’t want to get caught could just walk in,” Heitke said. “We have no idea who and what came into our country at that time.”

Heitke said there has been an increase in so-called Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) in the San Diego sector, who may have ties to terrorism.

Previously, that sector averaged 10 to 15 SIA arrests a year, he said. As news broke of what he described as an open border, Heitke said San Diego recorded more than 100 SIA arrests in 2022, and that trend is continuing.

Heitke said the Biden administration recently asked Mexico for help, and that has helped slow the flow of migrants. But he questioned why he thought it took so long for the Biden administration to act.

Desmond, the San Diego County supervisor, testified that more than 155,000 adult migrants, mostly men, were dropped off on the streets by buses from last September through June.

That’s an average of about 600 per day, he said.

According to Desmond, San Diego County has spent $6 million in local dollars to establish a migrant shelter to help the migrants dropped there and move them more quickly to other parts of the country.

Hathaway, the Arizona sheriff, said his border community of Santa Cruz County is safe. “But there are things Congress can do, and you have to take action,” he said.

Hathaway called on Congress to create a robust guest worker program.

Migrants generally come here to work, he said, but asylum seekers are not even allowed to work for the first six months they are in the country. He said we need immigration judges at the border.

Hathaway was asked about the economic impact of migrants. He responded that they are beneficial to the U.S. The sheriff said there is a “racist component” to some of the conversations and approaches to border security.

“I hate to use the ‘R’ word. It’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the racism word,” Hathaway said. “There’s a xenophobic aspect to it. There was never a proposal to build a wall on the northern border, on the Canadian border. There was never an intention to aggressively enforce Title 42 on the Canadian border. So there’s a kind of racist aspect to it that we all ignore. But it’s simmering in the background.”

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, disagreed with Hathaway’s assessment.

According to Greene, there are 77 major border walls worldwide and 45 countries are in the process of building more walls.

“Walls are not racist,” Greene said. “Walls keep people safe.”

Lawmakers on both sides blamed each other.

Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, blamed Republicans for blocking what he called the “most conservative immigration border security bill ever passed by a Democratic administration,” referring to the Senate’s failed immigration bill.

Green, the Republican committee chairman, called the Senate immigration bill “bad” and merely an excuse for Democrats to say they have done something to fix the problem.

“This administration is as unwilling to end this border crisis as it was when we began these investigations,” Green said.

Green raised his voice and accused Biden and Democrats of ignoring the problems he said are being caused by the influx of migrants.

“They’re bringing up the cat story,” Green said, referring to rumors of pets being eaten in Ohio. “I don’t care about that. I care about Laken Riley, who’s dead. I care about your daughter, who’s dead. Let’s talk about that. Instead, they’re talking about all this other stuff that just doesn’t matter.”

Rep. Lou Correa, a California Democrat, thanked Patty Morin for attending the hearing. Correa spoke candidly about how his own wife was attacked while jogging a few years ago.

Correa said Rachel Morin’s story should never be forgotten.

“I don’t care what side of the party you’re on, I don’t care what side of the immigration issue you’re on, we’ve got to put an end to this,” he said.

Correa also said that Congress must address the problems with the immigration system, as it affects migrants from all walks of life.

“There are basically three groups of individuals now,” Correa said. “You have the new asylum seekers. You have people who have been here for 20, 30 years, Dreamers, people in the military. And then you have people who are of concern to us in terms of terrorism. But within the current legal framework, we are not solving any of those problems.”

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