Less than a week after Kayla Hamilton turned 20, she was violently killed by an illegal alien MS-13 gang member in her bedroom, her mother told a House subcommittee Tuesday.
The suspect in Hamilton’s slaying is a 17-year-old unaccompanied alien child affiliated with MS-13 in El Salvador, according to Tammy Nobles, Hamilton’s mother.
“I don’t want any other parent to live the nightmare that I am living,” Nobles told during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing.
Nobles received the news of her daughter’s killing on July 27, about four months after the illegal alien entered the United States and was, according to Nobles’ sworn testimony before Congress, released into the country as an unaccompanied alien child to live with his aunt in Maryland, who was also an illegal alien.
The suspect later went to live with his half-brother in the same trailer park where Hamilton lived.
“She was working at a cleaning company and at a grocery store,” Nobles said of her daughter. “Kayla had autism, but she was determined to live independently and make her way in this world.”
Hamilton, who had little money and no credit, according to her mother, sublet a room in a trailer, the same trailer in which the then-16-year-old illegal also leased a room. Five days after he moved in, he entered Hamilton’s room and strangled her with a phone-charging cord and sexually assaulted her.
Hamilton’s boyfriend found her dead on the floor of her bedroom in Aberdeen, Maryland, with the cord still wrapped around her neck.
“Local police didn’t have enough evidence to arrest the murderer,” Nobles said, “so Child Protective Services took him into custody and placed [him] in an unsecured children’s home with other children, even knowing that he was the main suspect in a premeditated murder case.”
Nobles told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement that for her, “this is not a political issue.”
“This is a safety issue for everyone living in the United States,” she said.
Nobles says she does not know whether the Border Patrol vetted the suspect in her daughter’s killing before releasing him into the United States, but believes “if we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be alive today.”
In January, police in Maryland arrested the illegal alien in connection with Hamilton’s killing. The arrested man’s name has not been reported publicly because he is still a minor. He was charged with first-degree murder, as well as rape and robbery, and is currently being held without bail, Fox News reported Tuesday.
Under the policies of the Biden administration, unaccompanied migrant children remain in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement until they are placed with a parent or sponsor, but the agency does not track the whereabouts of unaccompanied illegal migrant children after they are placed with asponsor.
The Biden administration is reportedly unaware of the location of 85,000 unaccompanied alien children who entered the United States illegally and were then released to sponsors.
“In my professional assessment, the U.S. Border Patrol has lost our ability to know who and what is entering our homeland,” Rodney Scott, retired chief of the Border Patrol, testified during Tuesday’s hearing.
The hearing was the third in a series called “The Biden Border Crisis” examining the current situation at the border and the ability of Border Patrol to maintain order at the southern border under the policies of President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Has Secretary Mayorkas taken the actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control of the border?” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., asked Scott during the hearing.
“Absolutely not, sir,” Scott said. “If you listen to the words he … states every time, it’s about creating safe pathways,” Scott said of Mayorkas.
Mayorkas has come under harsh criticism and calls for his impeachment from Republicans over his handling of the southern border. Since the start of the Biden administration, Customs and Border Protection reports encountering more than 5.5 million illegal aliens at the southern border. Since fiscal year 2023 began on Oct. 1, CBP has encountered more than 1.4 million illegal aliens, about triple the number encountered at the southern border during the final fiscal year of the Trump administration.
According to Biggs, an estimated 750,000 people will be paroled into the United States this year, but with numbers that high, Scott says, it is “just not possible” for the Border Patrol to do the “legal assessment required for each individual case.”
In February, Biggs introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas for failing to secure America’s southern border, but House leadership has yet to launch impeachment proceedings against the DHS chief.
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