WASHINGTON — The mother of murdered Maryland woman Rachel Morin reduced the White House press corps to stunned silence Wednesday as she slammed her home state Sen. Chris Van Hollen for traveling to El Salvador to try to return a deported alleged MS-13 gang member.
“I just don’t understand this,” Patty Morin told reporters after graphically describing the 2023 murder of her 37-year-old daughter by Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, a different Salvadoran illegal immigrant who was convicted Monday of the crime.
Morin said she was outraged that “a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge — or barely acknowledged — my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother” chose to “use my tax money to fly to El Salvador to bring back a person … who isn’t even an American citizen.”
Van Hollen traveled to the Central American country seeking the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported following his apprehension last month in Prince George’s County, outside Washington, DC.
“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?” Van Hollen told reporters before Morin took the briefing room podium. “They should just let him go.”
The Justice Department initially stated in court filings that Abrego Garcia was erroneously deported due to an October 2019 court order sparing him from deportation due to fear of violence from a rival gang in El Salvador.
The White House has disavowed that statement, noting that immigration courts twice denied Abrego Garcia bond, with the initial ruling citing evidence that he was a member of the notorious gang.
Trump administration officials have also pointed out that Abrego Garcia crossed the US-Mexico border illegally in 2011, and his status had not changed.
But the initial Justice Department filing prompted a Democrat-led push to return Abrego Garcia to the US, and the Supreme Court ruled April 10 that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his return and “to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said Monday at the White House that he has no intention of returning Abrego Garcia — calling the idea “preposterous” — and the administration has noted that the high court didn’t require them to “effectuate” his return.
Amid the public relations battle over Abrego Garcia’s case, the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday revealed that he was accused of physically abusing his wife in 2021.
Spokespeople for Van Hollen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘The way that you would crush an eggshell’
Although Abrego Garcia and Martinez-Hernandez are not known to be associated, Patty Morin said that her daughter’s case demonstrates the need to continue Trump’s drive to deport alleged criminals in the US illegally.
“A lot of you don’t know the whole story about Rachel and about the crime that was committed against her,” said Morin, who had been billed as a “special guest” at a White House briefing that was added to the schedule Wednesday afternoon.
At the just-finished trial, “we saw layer upon layer upon layer of evidence against the accused and illegal immigrant from El Salvador,” she said.
“He saw her. He saw that there was nobody around. He attacked her. He dragged her 150 feet, blood gushing from her head. It left a 150-foot trail of her blood to the culvert where he took he picked her up, he threw her against the wall the tunnel, and he raped her,” the grieving mother narrated.
“But before he did that, he stopped on that trail and rocks — still stained with her blood — he used them. He hammered her head against those rocks. They say 20, at least 20 times. They could count the cuts in her head. They said that when they did the autopsy, and I’ve seen the pictures, there’s a six inch square in the back of her head where the skull is shattered, the way that you would crush eggshell in pieces.”
Patty Morin said Martinez-Hernandez savagely “dragged” her daughter through thorn bushes while beating her so severely that an autopsy revealed a fractured rib and fractured nose.
“Then he takes her into the tunnel, and he picks her up. He throws her against the wall — blood is gushing from her head. Her hair is soaked in blood, and they showed us pictures of her body against the wall, outline the blood, outlined her body, and you could see where the blood ran down around her as he was raping her,” she said.
“And then he threw her down and raped her some more, and then he strangled her because he didn’t want her to be able to live to tell the story.
“These are the kind of people that have no compulsion — like, to them this is nothing. And when he was sitting in the courtroom, he actually looked like he thought he was going to be set free,” Patty Morin went on.
“There was no remorse on his face at all… These are the kind of criminals President Trump wants to remove from our country. These are the kind of criminals that we need to remove from our country. We are American citizens. Why should we allow people like this, violent criminals that have no conscience at all to murder our mothers, our sisters, our daughters?”
Morin added: “I don’t care about politics. Well, I do, but I want to preserve life, and that’s the only reason why I have spoken about Rachel.”
“Why are we not protecting the American citizens? It’s just common sense. Why are we not protecting our children” she asked while berating Van Hollen.
The event ended after just 14 minutes without reporter questions.
‘There is no Maryland father’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed Democrats for rallying around Abrego Garcia before handing over her lectern to Morin — citing information released hours earlier by the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.
“Maryland’s Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen rushed to Dulles Airport this morning to fly to El Salvador, potentially using taxpayer dollars to demand the release of deported illegal alien MS-13 terrorist,” Leavitt said.
“The Democrats and the media in this room have continually and wrongly labeled Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a ‘Maryland father.’ There is no ‘Maryland father.’ Let me reiterate. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist who was deported back to his home country.
“When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally arrested, he was wearing a sweatshirt with rolls of money covering the ears, mouth and eyes of presidents on various currency denominations. This is a known MS-13 gang symbol of ‘hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.’
“Abrego Garcia was also arrested with two other well known members of the vicious MS-13 gang, and two separate judges found that Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13, and that finding has never been disputed.”
Leavitt noted that Abrego Garcia’s wife, who has advocated for his return, claimed in her petition for an order of protection that he “punched and scratched his wife, ripped off her shirt and grabbed and bruised her.”
“So not only are Democrats rushing to defend an illegal, criminal, foreign terrorist gang member, but also an apparent woman beater,” she said, adding that “if he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again. Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again.”
“It’s appalling and sad that Sen. Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens.”
