A mother whose daughter was killed by an MS-13 gang member and a mother whose daughter died from fentanyl testified during a Thursday House Homeland Security Committee hearing that the Biden administration is to blame for their children’s deaths.
Tammy Nobles, whose 20-year-old daughter Kayla Hamilton was killed by an MS-13 member in July 2022, is suing the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for $100 million for releasing the known gang member into the country. Josephine Dunn lost he daughter Ashley to fentanyl at the age of 26, which she emphasized has been pouring in across the southern border due to the policies of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“In my humble opinion, Mr. Mayorkas’ border policy is partially responsible for my daughter’s death. His wide-open border policy allows massive quantities of poisonous fentanyl into our country,” Dunn testified.
“Arizona is the fentanyl superhighway into the United States. I personally feel Mr. Mayorkas responsible for opening that border to allow more than 10,000,000 illegal border crossings since February 2021, which supports most of the illegal fentanyl into this country,” Dunn testified.
House Impeachment Hearing: A Virginia mother whose daughter Kayla Hamilton was killed by an MS-13 murderer who brutally strangled and raped her testifies:
“If we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be alive today.”
This mom is suing DHS for $100 million for… pic.twitter.com/EbQ6mCHzR9
— Jennie Taer (@JennieSTaer) January 18, 2024
Nobles testified that DHS and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials failed to properly check the MS-13 member for gang affiliation and vet his sponsor before releasing him into the country.
“DHS employees failed to visually inspect the assailant by lifting his shirt to check for gang-related tattoos. Had DHS employees performed a visual inspection of the assailant’s body, they would have seen MS-13 gang-related tattoos on his body, disqualifying him from entering the U.S. DHS employees failed to make a simple phone call to the El Salvador government to verify if the assailant was on an MS-13 gang affiliation list,” Nobles said.
“Ultimately, DHHS’s failures allowed the MS-13 gang member, as a minor, to rent a room in a trailer park from another individual who was also an illegal immigrant. There was also a lack of transparency by DHS and DHHS, including but not limited to DHHS failure to provide House of Representative Chairman Jim Jordan a copy of its audit report,” Nobles testified.
The committee called on Mayorkas to testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but he failed to show up.
“I flew from Arizona to meet him and face him and ask him, ‘Why?’ And he’s not here today. I did not know that until after I landed,” Dunn said.
“Our hearts go out to Ms. Hamilton’s family. We do not comment on pending litigation. The men and women of DHS take their responsibility to secure our homeland very seriously,” DHS told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Neither DHS nor HHS immediately responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Jennie Taer on January 18, 2024