BALTIMORE, Md. — In 2022, Kayla Hamilton, a 20 year-old woman with autism was raped and strangled to death at her home in Aberdeen. An illegal immigrant from El Salvador, Walter Javier Martinez, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 70 years in prison.
A year after Kayla's killing, a mother of five from a nearby community, Rachel Morin, was brutally murdered while out for a run on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air. Just this week, a jury convicted her killer, Victor Martinez Hernandez - also from El Salvador, also in the country illegally.
"This is just the second time in two years that an innocent Harford County woman has lost her life to a criminal in our country illegally," Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said in June 2024 when he announced Hernandez's arrest after a months-long search.
Patty Morin, Rachel's mother, testified in front of Congress last year, pushing for tougher border policies.
"I realize some of you are disinterested in this because you just think it's a partisan thing. But these are American people; these are American families," she told lawmakers.
Now, her name is being invoked again in the immigration debate - this time by the Trump administration, as they say her story should be at the forefront instead of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's, who was deported to El Salvador last month, setting off a political firestorm and legal battle.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X, "We hear far too much in the mainstream media about sob stories of gang members and criminal illegals and not enough about their victims."
And President Trump writing, "The Fake News should be focusing on the beautiful life and tragic death of this Maryland mother rather than the so-called 'Maryland father' who is actually an MS-13 gang member."
Abrego-Garcia entered the U.S. illegally in 2011. He was taken into DHS custody in 2019 in Hyattsville, Maryland, and was denied bond by two different immigration judges, citing evidence from an informant that he was an MS-13 gang member.
He requested asylum, but was denied that as well, because too much time had passed since his entry into the U.S. The deadline to apply is one year after arrival.
But a judge did grant him a special status, called "withholding from removal," protecting him from being deported specifically - and only - to his home country of El Salvador. The judge found that Abrego Garcia was likely to face persecution from local gangs there, who had been extorting his family for years - threatening to force Abrego Garcia to join their gang, or kill him, if his mother didn't pay them. That was why he fled to the U.S. as a teenager.
After he was granted the protective order in 2019, Abrego Garcia was released. U.S. immigrations officials did not appeal the decision. He was required to check in yearly with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which he did, and was granted a work permit by DHS.
Debates surrounding Kilmar Abrego-Garcia
Fast foward to 2025 - President Trump designates MS-13 an official terrorist organization, and Abrego Garcia is arrested in Baltimore and sent to a prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration admits it was an "administrative error" to violate the protective order, but defends the decision to deport him, and says it's now in the hands of the Salvadoran government.
The president of El Salvador says they don't have the authority to send him back. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen travelled there today on behalf of Abrego Garcia's family, and met with the Vice-President. He intended to check on Abrego Garcia's condition in prison, but said he was denied the chance to visit him, or talk to him on the phone. He said he'll keep pressing.
"Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence he's committed any crime, and they've not been provided any evidence from the United States that he's committed a crime?" he said during a media briefing. "They should let him go, and we will find a way to get him from El Salvador to Maryland."
But his efforts may be in vain. White House officials say they will cooperate with any Salvadoran efforts to bring him back here, but only to deport him again - either to another country, or if a judge agrees to revoke his protected status, back to El Salvador.
"I have been authorized to represent that DHS is prepared to facilitate Abrego Garcia's presence in the United states in accordance with those processes if he presents at a port of entry," said Joseph Mazarra, the Acting General Counsel for DHS. "In that case, DHS would take him into custody in the United States and either remove him to a third country or terminate his withholding of removal because of his membership in MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist organization, and remove him to El Salvador," Mazarra said.
"There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who is going to live a peaceful life in Maryland," Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this week.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garcia, adding that the evidence he was in MS-13 was based on a singular, unsubstantiated allegation.
The Supreme Court then weighed in, softening that directive, saying the White House just needs to help facilitate his return.
In a subsequent order, Judge Xinis said the Trump administration remains obligated to "take steps available to them toward aiding, assisting, or making easier Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador […] Defendants appear to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia's release from custody and return to the United States," Xinis said on Tuesday.
The White House maintains it cannot forcibly remove a citizen from their home country, and officials say all they would need to do to “facilitate” his return, if El Salvador decides to send him back, would be to provide a plane.
DHS also emphasized its position on X Wednesday that Abrego-Garcia is “not a sympathetic figure,” saying he was involved in human trafficking, and his wife had filed a protective order against him for domestic abuse. And Attorney General Pam Bondi released some of the evidence from 2019 that led DHS to believe he was in MS-13.
Abrego Garcia's attorneys have said repeatedly that he "is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang."
Patty Morin was a special guest at a late afternoon White House press briefing on Wednesday, where she detailed the gruesome details of her daughter's murder, details she says she only just learned during her recent trial, and criticized Senator Van Hollen's visit: “To have 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, and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen.”