Four mothers of children lost to criminal acts by people accused of living in or entering the country illegally say things have gotten worse since 2021 and will get worse, up to and including war on U.S. soil .
“I think if things continue like this, we’re going to have a war on our soil,” Patty Morin told U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., on Tuesday when he asked, “Do you think it’s worse, and do you think Do you think it could get any 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 it’s only going to get 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 reported a 2019 candidate questionnaire for the ACLU that was reportedly completed by Harris, then a presidential candidate, in which she said she would not detain immigrants in the country illegally and would look for ways to avoid gender transition medical procedures to offer.
“We are seeing more and more cases every day, far, far too many,” Nobles said of the border situation.
She is the mother of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton who was raped and murdered in Aberdeen, Maryland in July 2022. She was autistic. Walter Javier Martinez has been sentenced to prison and is believed to be a member of the MS-13 gang.
Morin is the mother of 38-year-old Rachel Morin, who was killed on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air in August 2023. Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 23, is charged and lawyers say he entered the United States illegally. .
She said people are blind to what is happening across the country.
“I just told one of the gentlemen I was at the border, I met some people at the border, I saw who lived at the border,” she testified. “I was also in New England a week ago and I was surprised by the amount of immigrants from Congo, and from Sudan, and from South America in northern New England. That’s unheard of. In Massachusetts they spent over $1.5 billion.”
In February 2022, 15-year-old Weston Fundner died in Southern California from what his mother believed was fentanyl poisoning rather than an overdose.
She said he tried something someone gave him, a situation she previously described as “the tragic reality of open borders.”
“Every year it gets bigger and bigger: the deaths,” Anne Funder testified. “I mean, this is on American soil. Since 2021, 300,000 people have been killed under the Biden-Harris administration, and that number is only growing. We expect it to be much bigger this year. And we have reports that they are currently under-reporting. And I’m not surprised, because it’s embarrassing. It’s going to be 100% worse.”
Three months ago, 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was found strangled in Houston.
Alexis Nungaray said honoring detainees by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — a sticking point for Democratic lawmakers and some Democratic sheriffs in North Carolina, where Bishop is running for attorney general — could help the situation.
“I do believe it’s getting worse,” she said, “and it’s going to get worse if we don’t use every detention center and every facility bed to hold them until their immigration court hearings to confirm this and ensure that the US citizens that we will be safe if we allow new individuals into this country because they are taking our future, our children.”
Joining them at the witness table were April Aguirre, crime victims advocate; Sheriff Mike Boudreaux of Tulane County, 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 affiliate researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
The hearing was tearful and had inappropriate moments. Bishop, while listing the names of those murdered, admonished Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-California, for laughing out loud; on social media he posted a photo of ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, DN.Y., with eyes closed.
In the short five minutes, Bishop shared multiple fatal MS-13 gang stories from the Charlotte area in Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, a memory of Georgia’s Laken Riley, and a 2015 pier shooting in San Francisco that was initially thought to be this one was random and bizarre.
He also referred to Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian migrants were recently accused of killing pets to eat as meals.
“I don’t know if it’s happening, we’ll find out.” he saidand added, “They also denied the Aurora thing.”
That would be Aurora, Colorado, where immigrants reportedly took over an apartment complex.
“Conditions in the United States are not the same as in the countries people are fleeing from,” Bishop said. He paused between each word and said, “That’s why they’re running.”
