Politics |

Rachel Morin murder: A closer look at accused man’s four border crossings

The man accused of raping and murdering Rachel Morin in Bel Air crossed the U.S. border three times in early 2023 and was expelled each time by U.S. Border Patrol, but Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez succeeded a fourth time, becoming part of a large wave of so-called “got-aways” to enter the country under a coronavirus pandemic-related border policy.

During his encounters with Border Patrol, agents found no criminal or other derogatory information about him, according to a source familiar with the matter, despite allegations known now about possible gang ties and his suspected involvement in a December 2022 killing of a woman in his native El Salvador.

El Salvadoran authorities found the woman’s body later and filed charges against Martinez-Hernandez sometime in January 2023, according to Harford County Sheriff Public Information Officer Robert Royster.

But it’s not clear when those charges were filed or when authorities issued a request to law enforcement worldwide, known as an Interpol “Red Notice,” that Martinez-Hernandez be located and arrested. Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler announced the existence of the Red Notice in June, after Martinez-Hernandez’s arrest.

Royster referred such questions about the timing of the charges in El Salvador and the international notice to the Harford County State’s Attorney’s office, which told The Baltimore Sun to call authorities in the Central American country. The Sun received no further information on the timing of the Red Notice after reaching out to El Salvadoran authorities, including the National Civil Police, in addition to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI. DHS said it cannot comment publicly on an ongoing criminal investigation.

On Jan. 19, 2023, Martinez-Hernandez crossed the U.S. border near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, when he was first apprehended by Border Patrol. After vetting, Border Patrol agents expelled him back to Mexico the same day.  Border Patrol picked him up, vetted, and expelled him two more times, once on Jan. 31, 2023, near El Paso, Texas, and again on Feb. 6, near Santa Teresa, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A week later, around Feb. 13, 2023, Martinez-Hernandez entered the U.S. without being inspected, admitted, or paroled by a U.S. immigration officer, according to ICE.

Martinez-Hernandez is now charged in Harford County in the August 2023 rape and murder of Morin, whose body was found near the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air.

The three border patrol expulsions took place under an emergency health authority known as Title 42. The aim of Title 42, which started under former President Donald Trump and continued under President Joe Biden until May last year, was to expel migrants from the country to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

But Title 42 came with side effects, some immigration experts say, including weakened vetting procedures and an increase in the number of “got-aways” who evade law enforcement.

The U.S. has biometric data-sharing agreements with El Salvador, which make it relatively easy to find out if someone has a criminal record in that country, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council in Washington, D.C., an organization that advocates for expanding immigration and immigrant justice.

But under Title 42, the U.S. government didn’t follow the same vetting processes it often implements for people who are taken into custody and processed for removal, Reichlin-Melnick said. As a result, he added, Martinez-Hernandez might not have been flagged even if there had been an Interpol notice for him at the time.

The Red Notice requesting the arrest of Martinez-Hernandez could not be located on Interpol’s database, although the majority of notices are restricted to law enforcement use only, according to Interpol’s website. An Interpol spokesperson said Red Notices are issued at the request of a member country on the basis of a valid national arrest warrant, and that they remain under the ownership of the country concerned and cannot be confirmed or shared without that country’s permission.

Ken Cuccinelli, who served in the Trump administration as a top DHS official and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said vetting wasn’t as thorough under Title 42, a tradeoff in limiting the spread of COVID-19.

“We tried to get everybody’s name, picture, thumbprint, that kind of thing. But, out in the field, there’s no question that was not always possible,” Cuccinelli said.

Following his three expulsions, Martinez-Hernandez was able to evade law enforcement, as part of a surge of so-called “got-aways” that occurred after Title 42 went into effect.

The number of detected got-aways was around 151,000 in fiscal year 2019, then dropped slightly to around 137,000 in 2020 when Title 42 went into effect halfway through the fiscal year, then surged to nearly 400,000 in 2021, per the latest DHS data. In 2023, the number soared to 750,000, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. Since Title 42 ended, the number declined to around 120,000 in the first five months of the current fiscal year, according to U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens.

A big reason for the surge in got-aways, some experts say, is that migrants didn’t have to risk being prosecuted for multiple illegal entries, since those prosecutions weren’t possible under Title 42, in contrast with the norms under pre-pandemic immigration laws.

“It did encourage a lot of criminal aliens to continue to attempt to re-enter,” said Selene Rodriguez of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Because of that, you had the increase in traffic, and that takes up more resources with your Border Patrol. The less resources that they have actually patrolling the border, the easier it is to increase that number of got-aways.”

The number of migrants with criminal convictions is a tiny fraction of total Border Patrol apprehensions. In fiscal year 2023, that number was 15,000 out of nearly 2 million total apprehensions, with close to half of the 19,000 convictions listed as illegal entry and re-entry.

“While this incident is extremely tragic,” said Nayna Gupta of the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, referring to Martinez-Hernandez’s suspected killing of Morin, “making it about how we need to be harsher and stricter on immigration, in a system that has become about as strict and harsh as it can get when it comes to criminality and the way that we’ve criminalized immigrants, the overwhelming majority of whom are not this person — that is a political game.”

Title 42 wasn’t meant to be a long-term policy, Rodriguez said. But after it ended, the Biden administration should have replaced it with a different security measure, she said, like reinstating Trump’s “Migrant Protection Protocols,” also known as “Remain in Mexico,” which required migrants to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed, instead of waiting in the U.S. Around 70,000 migrants were removed to Mexico under the policy under the Trump administration starting in January 2019.

Biden has referred to Trump’s policy as “dangerous” and “inhumane” and suspended it on his first day in office. A Human Rights Watch investigation described how the policy “sent people to some of Mexico’s most dangerous cities and needlessly and foreseeably exposed them to considerable risk of serious harm.”

A White House spokesperson responded to questions from The Sun about border security by expressing “deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Rachel Morin,” adding that “people should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law if they are found to be guilty.”

The White House has responded to criticism about the border by urging Congress to pass legislation, including a bipartisan deal that fell through in February, after Congressional Republicans called it a bad deal and refused to vote for it.

“At the end of the day, the buck does lie with Congress,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

In June, Biden took executive action that restricts asylum requests if the seven-day average of daily border crossings exceeds 2,500. Three weeks later, encounters dropped more than 40%, to just under 2,400 per day, DHS announced.

Regarding gang members who enter the country illegally, DHS said such people are ineligible for asylum, and that the agency uses “a range of resources and information” to inform screening and vetting. The agency also said it “conducts thorough screening and vetting for any individual that we encounter on the southern border who could be affiliated with [criminal] organizations.”

When asked how DHS handles people with “possible ties” to gangs, a White House official said people are detained if they pose a public safety or national security risk.