Mother whose daughter was killed by MS-13 suspect says border tragedies have ‘to end’
Anna Giaritelli
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A Maryland woman whose daughter was allegedly murdered by a suspect whom police have since confirmed as a 16-year-old MS-13 gang member has vowed to find justice — however long it takes.
“I’m in it for the long run, even if it’s a couple years from now, 10 years now,” Tammy Nobles said in a conversation with the Washington Examiner on Friday. “As long as I’m here, I will be available to continue to share her story and talk with whoever and hopefully to make changes at the border.”
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Nobles lost her 20-year-old daughter, Kayla Hamilton, in July 2022 and said she has spent the past 10 months trying to understand how the federal government allowed an illegal immigrant with gang sign tattoos into the country, seemingly unvetted, in the months before her daughter’s death.
Nobles appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and testified before the House Judiciary Committee about how her daughter would still be alive had it not been for weak border enforcement and an overburdened child placement system. The visit to Washington and conversations with members of Congress and their staff solidified her resolve to keep fighting.
“I will continue telling our story. And hopefully, it will make an impact … to make changes. I don’t have any political stake in either party,” Nobles said. “I’m just a normal working-class person. And hopefully, that will have an impact on others that it is a personal story and it’s true.”
Hamilton was found strangled to death, robbed, and raped in her Aberdeen, Maryland, home on July 27, 2022. The suspect in custody, now 17 years old, had also lived in the house in a room rented out by the landlord.
Nobles did not learn until January that the suspect was an MS-13 gang member or that he had come over the southern border illegally in March 2022.
The flurry of revelations was outlined in a report that the committee published this week, which included the Washington Examiner’s exclusive reporting earlier this year. The report said local police who arrested the suspect in January were able to confirm his gang status with one phone call and that his federal documents created when he was in custody at the border did not mention his gang markings.
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement did not note in his file nor share with the adult he claimed was an extended family member that he was a gang member.
“The case note about gang tattoos by law enforcement officials, dated August 2022, came mere months after the alien was in the care of DHS, ORR, and his sponsor,” the Judiciary Committee’s report stated, pointing to how only after the crime was his federal file mysteriously updated.
The suspect was pulled from the multifamily home when Aberdeen police discovered he was a minor and living alone. Despite his gang affiliation, he was placed in a foster home with other children as police investigated him as the lead suspect in the murder.
The suspect was one of 300,000 unaccompanied children who crossed the southern border during President Joe Biden’s two years in office following the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to reverse a pandemic policy that preceded the country’s largest-ever surge of minors to the United States.
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The influx has put an enormous strain on border officials, who have been pushed to process and transfer children to the Department of Health and Human Services, where a social worker will find a sponsor in the U.S. to release the child as quickly as possible.
“With [unacccompanied minors] coming in as fast as they are, they can not be properly vetted and tracked. Something has to be checked that has to end in change because I don’t want any other parents to experience this,” Nobles said. “I want something good to come from this — some change.”