The illegal alien “got-away” charged with 37-year-old Rachel Morin’s murder has since been indicted. At the same time, sanctuary jurisdictions across Maryland continue shielding criminal illegal aliens from arrest and deportation.
On August 5, 2023, Rachel Morin — a mother of five children — headed out for a walk at the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air, Maryland, in Harford County. When Morin did not return home, her boyfriend, Richard Tobin, reported her missing.
The following day, her body was found on the side of the trail.
On June 15, 2024, the Tulsa Police Department arrested 23-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, an illegal alien from El Salvador with ties to the MS-13 Gang, in connection to Morin’s rape and murder as well as a violent assault of a nine-year-old girl and her mother in Los Angeles, California.
On Tuesday, Martinez Hernandez was indicted in Harford County on first and second-degree murder charges as well as rape, sexual offenses, and kidnapping charges. Prosecutors say Morin was found bludgeoned with 15 head wounds and that Martinez Hernandez raped her before strangling her to death.
While Morin’s murder has swept national headlines and gained attention from former President Donald Trump, Maryland’s most populous cities and counties continue to enforce sanctuary policies to shield criminal illegal aliens from arrest and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Baltimore, Prince George’s County, Howard County, and Montgomery County have sanctuary policies to prevent ICE agents from taking custody of illegal aliens who are arrested for local crimes.
The sanctuary counties represent nearly three million of Maryland’s 6.1 million residents — comprising almost half of the state’s population.
In February, officials in Montgomery County shielded from deportation, on at least two occasions, 25-year-old illegal alien Nilson Granados-Trejo of El Salvador, who has since been charged in the shooting death of two-year-old Jeremy Poou-Caceres in Prince George’s County.
Granados-Trejo first arrived at the United States-Mexico border as an unaccompanied alien child (UAC) in May 2014 near Hidalgo, Texas. Subsequently, he was turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and resettled in New Jersey with a man who claimed to be his father.
In 2022, after failing to appear in immigration court, a federal judge ordered Granados-Trejo to be deported, but he was never deported. He was arrested twice for theft in Montgomery County, but local authorities continued to release him back into the community rather than turning him over to ICE agents.
Likewise, in December 2023, ICE agents finally located and arrested an illegal alien MS-13 Gang member who had been repeatedly shielded from deportation thanks to Prince George’s County’s sanctuary policy.
On numerous occasions, the illegal alien could have been turned over to ICE agents following arrests on local charges in Prince George’s County. Weeks after officials released him from jail in late 2016, he was arrested for murder.
The illegal alien was convicted in 2018 of voluntary manslaughter and served just one month in prison. Despite the conviction, officials in Prince George’s County again released the illegal alien back into the community instead of turning him over to ICE agents.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.