She went for a hike.
He had been turned back
three times.

She was a mother of five.

Rachel Morin was 37 years old. She was a mother — five children. She was on the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Harford County, Maryland, doing what millions of Americans do in August: going for a hike. She was not in a high-crime neighborhood. She was not in a place anyone would think to fear.

Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez found her there. He had no lawful right to be in the United States. He had an active Interpol Red Notice — an international arrest warrant — for raping a woman and her 9-year-old daughter in El Salvador. U.S. Border Patrol had turned him back at least three times. And then he got through.

There was a warrant. An international one.

An Interpol Red Notice is not a suggestion. It is a formal international request — the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant that exists — published to law enforcement in all 195 Interpol member countries. It flags an individual as a wanted fugitive. It asks that the individual be located and detained pending extradition or surrender.

Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez had one. It existed because he had confessed to, or was credibly suspected of, raping a woman and her 9-year-old daughter in El Salvador. That Red Notice was active when Border Patrol apprehended him the first time. It was active when they turned him back the second time. The third time. The flag was in the system. The system was not acting on it.

The Biden administration’s border policy during this period was built around high-volume processing and rapid release — catch-and-release at scale. A man with an active Interpol Red Notice was treated as a routine border-crosser to be turned away, not as a fugitive to be held. He walked back south three times. Then he walked north — and stayed.

Four attempts. Three turnarounds. One murder.

The border policy had a name. So does the administration that ran it.

This is primarily a federal failure, not a local one. Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler (R) and State’s Attorney James Alsop (R) had no role in Martinez Hernandez’s border encounters. They prosecuted the case once he was identified. The failure that put him on that trail happened at the southern border — under federal authority, under Biden administration policy.

Governor Wes Moore (D-MD) and the Biden administration’s DHS oversaw the federal border and immigration enforcement framework during the period when Martinez Hernandez was apprehended and released multiple times. Maryland does not maintain a state-level sanctuary law equivalent to Illinois’ Trust Act — but Maryland is a destination state whose governor has resisted expanded federal immigration enforcement cooperation.

Her mother went to Washington. And told them exactly what happened.

Rachel Morin’s mother testified before the House Judiciary Committee, describing how her daughter was killed by a man the U.S. government had in its hands — three times — and released. She did not speak in abstractions. She put a name to a face, a daughter to a policy, a murder to a system that chose throughput over safety at the southern border.

“My daughter is dead because our government chose not to act. He was in their hands. They let him go. Three times.”

Rachel Morin's mother — House Judiciary Committee testimony, 2024

Congressional testimony from victims’ families is part of the official legislative record. It is a primary source. Rachel Morin’s case became part of a broader pattern of testimony from family members of Americans killed by individuals who had been in federal immigration custody and released under Biden-era catch-and-release policies.

Three turnarounds. One through. Five children without their mother.