Maryland mother-of-five Rachel Morin was brutally raped and murdered in 2023 by an illegal immigrant ushered into the country under the Biden administration. After her killer, El Salvador national Victor Martinez-Hernandez, was convicted this week, the victim’s mother spoke at the White House, urging journalists who cover subjects such as illegal immigration to “tell the truth” about the damage done to the nation by noncitizens.

Twenty-four-year-old Martinez-Hernandez was convicted Monday in a Harford County, Maryland court of the first-degree murder, first-degree rape, third-degree sexual assault, and kidnapping of Rachel Morin on August 5, 2023. The jury deliberated for less than 50 minutes, and prosecutors pledged to seek the maximum penalty at sentencing. Patty Morin told the story in a visit to the White House on Wednesday, sharing the details of her daughter’s death at the hands of an illegal immigrant. “A lot of you don’t know the whole story about Rachel and about the crime that was committed against her,” Morin told reporters in the White House press briefing room. She said that Harford County detectives even kept details of the murder from the family “because they didn’t want to do anything to hurt the case. They wanted to keep the integrity of the case, so they kept everything close.”

“I sat for the last two weeks in her trial, and we saw layer upon layer upon layer of evidence against the accused and illegal immigrant from El Salvador,” Morin said. She added, “I want to share some of those things with you.” Rachel was attacked, raped, and killed while walking the Ma and Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland. Her mother explained, “We’ve walked the trail for the last 25 years that we’ve lived in Maryland. It’s a safe place for our family. It’s where we go to get a little bit of New England, because that’s where we’re from — New England.” She continued, “When she went on that trail that day, she was not planning on dying. She wasn’t planning on walking to her death. She was planning on going to the grocery store with her girls afterwards.”

“Victor Martinez waited for her, he waited for her to come closer. He saw her. He saw that there was nobody around. He attacked her. He dragged her 150 feet, blood gushing from her head,” Morin detailed, growing visibly emotional. She continued, “He picked her up, he threw her against the wall of the tunnel, and he raped her. But before he did that, he stopped on that trail and — rocks, still stained with her blood — he used them to hammer her head against those rocks, they say at least 20 times.” Openly crying, Morin added, “They could count the cuts in her head.”

“Her right and left side of her face — bashed in. Her beautiful face — bashed in. Her head — bashed in. Broken bones. Fractures,” Morin recounted. She explained that, as Rachel was bleeding to death, Martinez-Hernandez held her against the wall of the tunnel and raped her repeatedly, before throwing her on the ground and raping her further. “And then he strangled her because he didn’t want her to be able to live, to tell the story,” Morin said somberly.

“These are the kind of people that have no compulsion — like, to them, this is nothing. And when he was sitting in the courtroom, he actually looked like he thought he was going to be set free. There was no remorse on his face at all,” Morin recalled, referring to Martin-Hernandez. “This person took my daughter so violently and so gruesomely and so graphically,” Morin lamented. She continued, “These are the kind of criminals President Trump wants to remove from our country. 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 implored. She went on, “I don’t even understand why there’s any kind of problem with this. It’s not that it’s political, the Left and the Right … but we have to look at it as, ‘We are American citizens. We need to protect our families, our borders, our children.’” She added, “I don’t care about politics. … I just want to preserve life.” On the verge of tears, Morin asked, “Why are we not protecting the American citizens? It’s just common sense. Why are we not protecting our children?”

Referring to Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has gone to El Salvador to attempt to negotiate the release and return of a deported illegal immigrant identified as a member of the foreign terrorist organization Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Morin said: “To have a senator from Maryland who didn’t even acknowledge, or barely acknowledged, my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother … so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen.”

Morin asked, “Why does that person have more right than I do? Or my daughter, or my grandchildren? I don’t understand this.” Leaving the podium in tears, Morin turned once more to the reporters in the room and implored, “Please tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell how violent it really is. This is about protecting our children, it’s more than just politics or votes or anything.” She added, “It’s about national security, protecting American citizens, protecting our children.”