Tammy Nobles on the Border Crisis: ‘I Don’t Want Any Other Parent to Live the Nightmare I Am Living’

Illegal immigration is no longer an issue that only impacts people in border states. According to a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, it has passed inflation as the #1 issue facing the nation. Communities across the country are feeling the detrimental effects of migrant crossings on their schools and businesses, and it’s contributed to a tremendous increase in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and crime.

Last Thursday, two mothers spoke on Capitol Hill before the House Homeland Security Committee, sharing their heartbreaking stories about how they lost their daughters due to the actions of illegal immigrants — two criminals that, before 2021 when the Biden administration took over, most likely would have been stopped at the border and not allowed into the United States.

Tammy Nobles from Maryland and Josephine Dunn from Arizona testified at the committee’s impeachment hearing for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Both of these grieving mothers believe that their daughters’ deaths were the result of Secretary Mayorkas’s refusal to follow the laws and secure the border. While Mrs. Dunn took the long trip from Arizona to Washington, D.C. to share her story, Mayorkas did not even show up to the two days of hearings to listen to her or Mrs. Nobles or look them in the eye.

Tammy Nobles’s daughter, Kayla Hamilton, was brutally raped and murdered on July 27, 2022 by an MS-13 gang member who strangled her with her phone cord and robbed her of $6.00. Kayla’s life would have been spared if this known violent MS-13 gang member had been stopped at the southern border. But he was not. Instead, according to Nobles:

“Among other neglectful actions, DHS employees failed to visually inspect the assailant by lifting his shirt to check for gang-related tattoos. Had DHS employees performed a visual inspection of the assailant’s body, they would have seen MS-13 gang related tattoos on his body, disqualifying him from entering the U.S. DHS employees failed to make a simple phone call to the El Salvador government to verify if [the] assailant was on an MS-13 gang affiliation list. Had they done so, El Salvador government officials would have confirmed that the assailant was a known MS-13 gang member with a prior criminal history. DHS supervisors had failed to train and supervise DHS employees to properly screen minors attempting to enter U.S. soil from El Salvador.”

As Nobles told Fox News’s Harris Faulker, the detectives who were working on Kayla’s case asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they could hold the suspect, a minor, until the DNA evidence came back, and ICE refused to. So the detectives had Child Protective Services (CPS) hold him, and CPS told the detectives that they were going to put him in a secure location. They later found out that officials put him in an unsecured children’s home where he had issues with other children. Finally, CPS put him into a foster home.

Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), joined Nobles for that FOX News interview. Astounded, Faulkner asked Green, “He’s still illegal right? ... Why does he get the same rights of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in this country? ... This guy gets to roam and gets put into homes where there are children.”

Green shared her frustration replying, “It’s insane. In fact, this individual gets more rights than an American citizen. An American citizen, under the [Department of Justice] right now, if there’s a court hearing pending, they report that information. They’ll say when the court date is. For illegals, they don’t even advertise or tell us the court dates for these people. It’s insane. They get more rights than we do.”

Faulker asked, “If he’s part of a gang, doesn’t he get a special designation of terror? I just don’t get it.”

Green responded, “They’re supposed to.”

At the end of her heart-wrenching testimony at Mayorkas’s impeachment hearing, Nobles said:

“For me this not a political issue — this a safety issue for everyone living in the United States. This could have been anyone’s daughter. I don’t want any other parent to live the nightmare that I am living. I am her voice now, and I am going to fight with everything I have to get her story told and bring awareness of the issue at the border. 

“If we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be alive today. Nothing will bring my daughter back nor fix the pain of not having her here, but I want to prevent this from happening to someone else’s child. This isn’t about immigration, this is about protecting everyone in the United States.” 

While Nobles lost her daughter to a rapist and murderer who should have been caught at the border, Mr. and Mrs. Dunn lost their daughter due to the actions of a drug dealer that DHS should have stopped from coming into our country. Dunn talked about her daughter, Ashley, who would have turned 29 on January 19 — the day she offered her testimony. Instead, Ashley died as a result of fentanyl poisoning when she was 26 years old. With deep emotion, Dunn tearfully explained:

“In the same five minutes that I get to share her story, someone else’s loved one in the United States will die from fentanyl. Over the next 24 hours, 190 loved ones will die. Today, in my state, the beautiful state of Arizona alone, five people will lose their lives to this weapon of mass destruction.”

Ashley’s murderer is a convicted, repeat drug distribution offender, a 44-year-old career drug dealer and trafficker. She has 14 prior convictions for drug sales. Dunn stated that one half of one pill that contained five milligrams of fentanyl killed Ashley. She went on to explain:

“Her dealer cannot be prosecuted for Ashley’s death. Nor can she even be charged. Ashley’s son, her father, and I are not even considered victims of ‘Dawn the Dealers’ actions. We do not even have the ability to provide a victim impact statement in Ashley’s trafficker’s case. The evidence is clear in Ashley’s phone. Toxicology report states five milligrams of fentanyl. Nothing can be done. She knowingly sold poison to our daughter which caused her death. Yet she will not be charged.”

According to The Heritage Foundation, fentanyl is often disguised as other medication. It kills before the victim even realizes what is happening to them. In addition, most illicit fentanyl today is manufactured in Mexico and brought across our southern border.

Heritage explains, “The American public needs to understand these fentanyl deaths aren’t classic overdoses among addicts. These aren’t broken kids with ‘substance use disorder.’ The overwhelming majority aren’t actively seeking fentanyl at all. Rather, in an age where medication is advertised wall-to-wall on our TVs, radio and social media, kids (like adults) think they can take a pill to fix anything, including stress and anxiety — conditions rampant among young people."

Opioids, largely fentanyl, are now the number one killer of Americans aged 18-45 years old. Secretary Mayorkas and the Department of Homeland Security should do everything it can to put a stop to this epidemic and secure our borders immediately. And yet, Mayorkas didn’t even show up to listen to Dunn’s testimony, where she said:

“I understand that the mission of [the] Department of Homeland Security is to secure our nation’s air, land, sea, and borders to prevent illegal activity while facilitating lawful travel and trade. In my humble opinion, Mr. Mayorkas is partially responsible for my daughter’s death. His wide-open border policy allows massive quantities of poisonous fentanyl into our country. Arizona is the fentanyl superhighway into the United States. I personally feel Mr. Mayorkas is guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy who uses 10 million illegal border crossings since February 2021 to supply fentanyl, the weapon of mass destruction that has killed over 100,000 Americans on our soil for two years in a row.

“This is an invasion, a weapon of mass destruction, and unimaginable death and damage to our country [has been] facilitated by Mr. Mayorkas. His participation in all of this, what I believe is a war, is clearly intentional support of the enemy, which disqualifies him from his position. Our country deserves a secure border. We need to close the fentanyl superhighway. Thank you.”