The teenager who raped and murdered a Maryland woman last summer was a known gang member arrested in his native El Salvador before coming to the U.S. under a special program that welcomes illegal immigrants under the age of 18 and provides them with a multitude of taxpayer benefits. Even after getting charged with homicide federal authorities placed the migrant offender, who sports tattoos displaying affiliation with the famously violent Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), in a foster home with other children. The unbelievable facts of this case are outlined in a congressional report that illustrates how the Biden administration’s radical open border policies allow dangerous criminals into American communities. “DHS did not sufficiently screen this alien for potential gang affiliation at the time of his apprehension or adequately safeguard Americans by ensuring that he would not be released into the country,” a House Judiciary Committee investigation found.
The gruesome crime occurred in July 2022 in Aberdeen, Maryland about 25 miles northeast of Baltimore. A 20-year-old woman, Kayla Hamilton, was raped and murdered by a 16-year-old from El Salvador who entered the U.S. via the Mexican border. DNA evidence collected at the crime scene led police to the young migrant, who turned 17 by the time he was arrested earlier this year. Detectives confirmed then that the perpetrator was an illegal alien and a member of MS-13. Under U.S. law illegal immigrant minors are almost always allowed to remain in the country and are quickly disbursed to a government-funded shelter upon arrival at the southwest border. The government refers to them as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and hundreds of thousands have entered the country in the last few years. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is charged with caring for them and the agency spends millions of dollars annually to house, medically treat, entertain, and school UAC who come mainly from Central America.
In this tragic case—as in many others—the government failed miserably to properly vet the UAC, according to the congressional probe. It found that years before coming to the U.S. the illegal immigrant murderer was arrested in El Salvador for illicit association with the MS-13, a feared street gang of mostly Central American illegal immigrants that has spread throughout the U.S. and is renowned for drug distribution, murder, rape, robbery, home invasions, kidnappings, vandalism, and other violent crimes. The affiliation should have banned him from the UAC program. Federal authorities also ignored the alien’s gang tattoos, congressional investigators say, and they were not disclosed by HHS in his case file or by the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (OR) at the time of his placement or in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alien file at the time of his apprehension. “In addition to having indications of the alien’s criminality, the alien’s case file also shows that while his homicide charge was pending and after his affiliation with MS-13 was known, authorities placed him in a foster home with other children,” the Judiciary Committee report states, adding that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official expressed concern for the safety of other children present in the foster home with the “violent” migrant.
The teenage gang member was apprehended by Border Patrol in Texas on March 23, 2022, just months before he raped and killed Hamilton. He told authorities that members of his family paid $4,000 to have him smuggled into the U.S. to escape gang-related threats. He was to live with a cousin in Maryland, but a month later the illegal immigrant ran away from that home. His case file provides details about his violent criminal past, congressional investigators write in the report. “Tragically, Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas and his department missed key warning signs about the alien’s propensity for violence, which law enforcement officials investigating the murder later uncovered,” the report says, adding that “the Biden Administration’s disregard for the safety of Americans directly resulted in the tragic and—sadly, preventable—murder of Kayla Hamilton.”
Other UAC have committed violent crimes after Uncle Sam welcomed them into the country, including two teens—one from El Salvador and other from Guatemala—charged with raping a 14-year-old girl at a Maryland public high school. In another case, two 17-year-olds from Central America executed a Massachusetts man by shooting him in the head shortly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Both had ties to MS-13, authorities disclosed at the time.