Rachel Morin murder suspect is an illegal immigrant who entered the US after being released three times.
In January and February of 2023, Border Patrol apprehended Rachel Morin's alleged killer three times.
ICE confirmed to Planet Chronicle' Bill Melugin that the illegal immigrant accused of killing Rachel Morin, a mother of five from Maryland, had entered the U.S. as a "gotaway."
According to a statement sent to Planet Chronicle, ICE confirmed that Morin's alleged killer was caught by Border Patrol three times in January and early February 2023 and was returned to Mexico under Title 42 each time.
James Covington, an ICE ERO spokesperson, admitted that he entered the country without inspection, admission, or parole by a U.S. immigration officer on or around February 13th, 2023 near El Paso.
On June 14, law enforcement officials from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the FBI arrested Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, a 23-year-old Salvadoran national who was wanted by authorities in Harford County, Maryland, for the murder of Rachel Morin on August 6, 2023.
On June 15, 2024, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed an immigration detainer against Martinez-Hernandez at the Tulsa County Jail. On June 20, 2024, authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, successfully extradited Martinez-Hernandez to Harford County, Maryland. Currently, Martinez-Hernandez is being held in the Harford County Jail pending trial.
On June 14, after a 10-month investigation into Morin's murder, Martinez Hernandez was arrested.
He was charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape.
"Harford County Sheriff Jeffery Gahler previously stated that Rachel was not the first victim of the suspect, who fled to the United States after committing a brutal murder in El Salvador in January 2023."
On August 5, 2023, in Bel Air, a quiet and typically safe town about 28 miles northeast of Baltimore, Morin, 37, went missing while on a run on the Ma & Pa Trail, a pedestrian trail. Her boyfriend reported her missing after she never returned.
Gahler criticized the Biden administration's "failed immigration policies" at the time of Martinez Hernandez's arrest.
"Gahler stated that we are 1,800 miles away from the southern border and American citizens are not secure due to their ineffective immigration policies."
"An innocent Harford County woman has lost her life to a criminal who is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with ties to criminal gangs for the second time in two years, according to him. He repeated his statement, expressing his disapproval of the situation."
Martinez Hernandez currently remains in the Harford County Jail pending trial.
Planet Chronicle Digital's Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Baille Hill contributed to this report.
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