Four mothers of children lost to criminal acts by people accused of living or having entered the country illegally say it’s worse since 2021 and will get even more so, up to and including war on American soil.
“I think if things continue we’re going to have a war on our soil,” Patty Morin on Tuesday told US Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., when he asked, “Do you think it’s worse, and do you think it can get even worse than it is now?” during a Judiciary Committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The hearing, “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives,” brought together Morin, Tammy Nobles, Anne Fundner and Alexis Nungaray – mothers of victims – and four others.
Bishop said, “This crisis is deadly. It’s unsustainable and only getting worse. And it was all completely avoidable.”
The sworn testimony came on the day of the presidential debate between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
It was also a day after CNN recounted a 2019 candidate questionnaire for the ACLU reportedly filled out by Harris, then a presidential candidate, saying she would not detain immigrants in the country illegally and look for ways to provide gender-transitioning medical procedures.
“We’re seeing more and more cases every day, a lot, way too many,” Nobles said of the border situation.
She’s the mother of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton who in July 2022 was raped and killed in Aberdeen, Md. She was autistic. Walter Javier Martinez has been convicted, sentenced to prison and is believed a member of the MS-13 gang.
Morin is the mother of 38-year-old Rachel Morin, who was killed in August 2023 on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Md. Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 23, is charged, and lawmen say he illegally entered the United States.
She said there’s a blind eye for what is happening across the country.
“I was just telling one of the gentlemen that I was at the border, I met some folks at the border, I saw who lives at the border,” she testified. “I was also up in New England a week ago, and I was surprised at the amount of immigrants from the Congo, and from Sudan, and from South America in northern New England. That’s unheard of. In Massachusetts, they’ve spent over $1.5 billion.”
In February 2022, 15-year-old Weston Fundner died in southern California from what his mother says was a fentanyl poisoning rather than overdose.
She said he tried something someone gave him, a situation she described previously as “the tragic reality of open borders.”
“Every year, it gets larger and larger – the deaths,” Anne Funder testified. “I mean, this is on American soil. We have 300,000 people dead since 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration, and it’s just growing. We expect it to be much bigger this year. And we have reports that they are under-reporting right now. And I’m not surprised because it is embarrassing. It’s 100% getting worse.”
Three months ago, 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was found strangled to death in Houston.
Alexis Nungaray said honoring detainers by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement – a sticking point for Democratic lawmakers and some Democratic sheriffs in North Carolina where Bishop is running for attorney general – can help the situation.
“I do believe it is getting worse,” she said, “and it will continue to get worse if we do not use every detention center, and facility bed, to detain them until their immigration court hearings to confirm and make sure for us U.S. citizens that we will be safe with letting new individuals in this country because they’re taking our future, our children.”
Joining them at the witness table were April Aguirre, crime victims advocate; Sheriff Mike Boudreaux of Tulane County in California; Melissa Lopez, executive director of Estrella del Paso, formerly known as Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services; and Dr. Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, of the University of California San Diego, an affiliated researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
The hearing was tearful and with unbecoming moments. Bishop, as he recounted names of people killed, admonished Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., for laughing aloud; on social media, he posted a photo of ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., with eyes closed.
In the brief five minutes, Bishop shared multiple fatal MS-13 gang stories from the Charlotte area in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, remembrance of Laken Riley from Georgia, and a 2015 pier shooting in San Francisco first thought to be random and freak.
He also alluded to Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian migrants were recently accused of killing pets to eat for meals.
“I don’t know if it’s happening, we’ll find out,” he said, adding, “They denied the Aurora thing, too.”
That would be Aurora, Colo., where immigrants allegedly took over an apartment building.
“Conditions are not the same in the United States as in the countries from which people are fleeing,” Bishop said. Pausing between each word, he said, “That’s why they’re fleeing.”
