The mother of a woman allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant praised former President Bill Clinton for acknowledging that the tragedy happened because the killer was released into the U.S., Fox News reported. Clinton made his remark while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris, who was in charge of securing the border.
Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez allegedly murdered Rachel Morin in August 2023. The 23-year-old El Salvadorian was already a wanted man when he emigrated to the U.S. illegally.
While in California, Martinez-Hernandez sexually assaulted a mother and her 9-year-old before heading to Maryland, where he would allegedly take Morin's life before hiding her body in a culvert. Morin's mother, Patty Morin, has advocated for border security to prevent another tragedy like this.
She found a surprising advocate in Clinton, who said that the life of another murdered young woman, Laken Riley, would have been spared if the Biden/Harris administration had secured the border. Harris was tasked with fixing illegal immigration which has exploded under her watch.
In a campaign appearance on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris Sunday, Clinton railed against the failure to get a border security bill that would have weeded out murderers and other bad actors from border crossings. He was speaking about it in the context of the murder of 22-year 0ld nursing student Laken Riley.
Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan migrant with possible ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, entered the U.S. through El Paso, Texas, the New York Post reported. He was caught but released into the U.S. because Border Patrol had no place to keep him.
Just as with Morin's murder, Ibarra should not have been in the country to commit the crime in the first place. Clinton's acknowledgment of this fact was supposed to help Harris, but it only underscored her failure to do her job.
Clinton claimed that Harris had wanted to cut immigration and vet migrants, but blamed Trump for stopping a bipartisan bill that supposedly would have done that. "Now, Trump killed the bill. The bill was being written by senior Republicans in the Senate, and he killed the bill. Why?" Clinton asked.
"You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn't you? They made an ad about it. A young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they'd all been properly vetted that probably wouldn't have happened. But if they’re all properly vetted, that doesn’t happen," he added of Riley.
Clinton was attempting to make a point that Trump was the one to blame for the border situation. However, Trump was out of power then, so recounting the circumstances of Riley's murder was an indictment on the Biden/Harris administration.
Randolph Rice, the family attorney for the Morins, released a statement agreeing with that fact. "His violent criminal history, known in his home country, was overlooked," Rice said of the young woman's killer.
"The Morin family joins President Clinton in calling out the failures of the Biden-Harris administration to enforce immigration laws and protect American families. While the administration continues to turn a blind eye to the dangers posed by improperly vetted individuals crossing the border, President Clinton’s remarks recognize the reality that the current policies are failing the American people."
The failures of the last four years belong squarely on Biden's and Harris's shoulders. Clinton tried to blame Trump, but even his own facts point directly to the current administration.