During an appearance as a special guest at Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, who was killed by an illegal immigrant, shared the gruesome details of her daughter’s death, then pleaded with the media to “tell the truth.”
“Please tell the truth,” Patty Morin begged reporters on her way out as they expressed their condolences and thanked her for speaking.
“Tell the truth, tell how violent it really is,” Morin added. “This is about protecting our children. It’s more than just politics or votes or just anything. It’s about national security, protecting Americans, protecting our kids.”
Morin joined White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at the podium to talk about her daughter’s August 2023 murder by Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez.
Patty Morin’s daughter, Rachel, a Maryland mother of five children, was jogging when Martinez-Hernandez came up on her and beat, raped and strangled her to death.
On Monday, a Maryland jury found Martinez-Hernandez guilty on all counts of first-degree murder, first-degree rape, third-degree sexual offense and kidnapping.
Patty Morin shared with the press the horrific details of her daughter’s murder, including how Martinez-Hernandez raped and strangled her daughter after crushing her skull like an “eggshell.”
She said photos of the brutal attack show that not “one inch” of her daughter’s body remained free from injury and the photos have been sealed because they are so graphic.
“You could see [the outline] where the blood ran down around her as he was raping her, and then he threw her down, and raped her some more, and then he strangled her because he didn’t want her to be able to live to tell the story,” Morin said.
“These are the kind of criminals President Trump wants to remove from our country,” she added. “These are the kind of criminals that we need to remove from our country. We are American citizens. Why should we allow people like this, violent criminals that have no conscience at all to murder our mothers, our sisters, our daughters?”
Morin called out her senator, Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador Wednesday “to show solidarity” with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant and suspected MS-13 gang member who lived in Maryland before the administration deported him to the Central American country’s mega prison.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said Abrego Garcia has a “history of violence and was not the upstanding ‘Maryland Man’ the media has portrayed him as.”
DHS shared court filings in which Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, sought a domestic violence restraining order against him, claiming he “punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt.”
RACHEL MORIN VERDICT IS A CONVICTION FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, SAYS PATTY MORIN’S ATTORNEY
“To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge – 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 is not even an American citizen,” Morin said. “Why does that person have more right than I do for my daughter or my grandchildren? I don’t understand this.”
Following Martinez-Hernandez’s conviction, Van Hollen issued a statement vowing to bolster border security while also “supporting our immigrant communities.”
“While the conviction of Rachel Morin’s killer will not return Rachel to her family where she rightfully belongs, this verdict brings a measure of justice that they so deserve,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “I’m grateful to the law enforcement officers who brought her killer into custody and for our legal process for delivering this justice.”
CNN and MSNBC did not carry the briefing with Morin live.
According to a study by the Media Research Center, ABC, CBS, and NBC spent zero seconds on the Martinez-Hernandez trial, but 64 minutes were spent on Garcia between April 1 and 15.
Margo Martin, special assistant to the president and communications advisor, posted a video on X showing Patty Morin praying with the White House staff before the briefing.
“This is probably going to be one of the highlights of my life, being able to be a part of a prayer meeting at the White House,” Patty Morin said in the video. “There is no greater God than the one that we serve, and because there is no greater God, he has a purpose and plan for all of us being here at this moment in time, and even the death that happened to Rachel is part of his purpose.”
