Rachel Morin murder: Maryland lawmaker confronts Mayorkas over 'failure' involving illegal immigrant suspect
Republican Maryland Rep. Andy Harris on Tuesday morning sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, asking why a DNA sample from the illegal immigrant suspect charged in Rachel Morin's murder was never collected.
Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five, was brutally murdered on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland — an affluent Baltimore suburb north of the city — in August 2023.
"Rachel Morin’s alleged murderer, Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, had multiple encounters with border agents prior to being charged with the first-degree murder and rape of Rachel Morin. Yet, it appears his DNA was never collected," Harris wrote in his Tuesday letter, calling it a "persistent and systemic failure" and noting how U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is required to collect the DNA of all illegal immigrants under the DNA Fingerprint Act.
In June, Harford County Sheriff Jeffery Gahler announced the arrest of Martinez-Hernandez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador, in Morin's murder.
Martinez-Hernandez was apprehended in Tusla, Oklahoma, and faces charges of first-degree murder, rape and kidnapping, in connection with Morin's death.
Harris went on to note allegations that less than a third of migrants that officers encounter at the border have their DNA samples collected by CBP, according to DHS whistleblowers.
READ REP. HARRIS' LETTER:
"In fact, the internal government memo found that of the nearly 1.7 million encounters with illegal immigrants in Fiscal Year 2022, only about 37% resulted in DNA collection. It is being reported this figure dropped to 31% in Fiscal Year 2023," Harris wrote, adding that "because of a lack of DNA samples, law enforcement investigators were forced to go on a prolonged, country-wide search which allowed a deadly criminal to roam freely for [10] months."
The Maryland congressman is asking Mayorkas about whistleblower claims that DNA is being collected from only a third of migrants encountered at the southern border; whether a DNA sample was ever collected from Martinez-Hernandez after he entered the United States; and if not, why not?
Investigators tied DNA found at the scene of Morin's murder to DNA found inside a Los Angeles residence after a home invasion in March of last year.
"Once in our country, and likely emboldened by his anonymity, he attacked a 9-year-old girl and her mother during a home invasion in March 2023 in Los Angeles," Gahler said at the time of the suspect's arrest. "And as everyone I believe is aware, that was our first DNA match linking Rachel's case to the one in Los Angeles."
Rachel Morin murder: El Salvadorian suspect indicted in 'crucial step': family's lawyer
An illegal immigrant was indicted this week for the brutal rape and murder of Rachel Morin in what an attorney for the victim's family called a "crucial step."
Despite the DNA match linking the two cases, however, authorities were unable to find an identity match for the DNA samples collected from either crime scene because it was not previously logged in the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) system, where authorities log DNA samples of offenders arrested in the United States.
"We are 1800 miles from the southern border," Gahler said in June. "And American citizens are not safe because of their failed immigration policies."
Fox News' Sarah Rumpf and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
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