The mother of murdered Maryland woman Rachel Morin left the White House press corps in stunned silence Wednesday as she blasted her home state senator, Chris Van Hollen, for traveling to El Salvador to bring back a deported alleged MS-13 gang member.
“I just don’t understand this,” Patty Morin told reporters after graphically detailing the brutal 2023 murder of her 37-year-old daughter by 24-year-old Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a Salvadoran illegal immigrant who was convicted of the crime on Monday.
Morin said she was incensed 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 El Salvador to advocate for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported last month after being apprehended in Prince George’s County, just outside Washington, D.C., the New York Post reported.
“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?” Before Morin took the briefing room podium, Van Hollen made false claims to reporters. “They should just let him go.”
The Trump administration on Wednesday released several case files on Abrego Garcia, clearly identifying him as a member of the now-terrorist-designated MS-13 group. In addition, despite Van Hollen’s assertion, Abrego Garcia committed the crime of entering the U.S. illegally and had a deportation order from a federal judge.
The Justice Department initially claimed in court filings that Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported, citing an October 2019 court order that had protected him from removal due to fears of violence from a rival gang in El Salvador.