The White House offered “condolences” to the loved ones of Rachel Morin but would not say what steps it would take to secure the border.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Rachel Morin,” a White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “We cannot comment on active law enforcement cases. But fundamentally, we believe that people should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law if they are found to be guilty.”
The statement comes after the arrest last week of 23-year-old Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a native of El Salvador who entered the U.S. illegally and is accused of being behind the murder of Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five who was found brutally raped and murdered near a Maryland hiking trail in August.
The arrest of Martinez Hernandez comes just a few months after the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, 22, who was found dead near Oconee Forest Park in Athens, Georgia, after going for a jog. The suspect in that case, José Antonio Ibarra is a 26-year-old native of Venezuela who also entered the U.S. illegally.
RACHEL MORIN MURDER: OPEN BORDER ‘ALLOWED’ ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TO KILL MOM OF 5, MARYLAND SHERIFF SAYS
President Biden (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
While the White House offered its condolences to the family in the case, it did not return multiple inquiries by Fox News Digital seeking comment on what the administration’s threshold would be to shut down the border or take more severe measures if the cases of similar murders continued to mount.
In the case of Morin’s murder, the Maryland sheriff who helped investigate the case sounded off about the need for more secure borders.
“He tried to come in legally and he was turned away. And yeah, that didn’t deter him because we have such a porous border and he came right through… and this is the result,” Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told Fox News Tuesday.
Victor Martinez Hernandez, 23, was arrested in the murder of Rachel Morin.
According to investigators, a police tip and DNA evidence assisted authorities in zeroing in on Martinez Hernandez. The El Salvador native was then tracked to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where police arrested him while he was sitting at a local bar.
Gahler noted that Martinez Hernandez is suspected of committing a similar crime in El Salvador, yet was able to slip into the U.S. because of the country’s lack of border security.
“He killed a woman in El Salvador and that’s why he fled there, to come here through our open border,” Gahler said.
Harford Sheriff Jeff Gahler addressing reporters at a press conference Sunday after Rachel Morin was found dead on a hiking trail in Maryland. (Harford County Sheriffs Office)
The Maryland sheriff argued that the current situation at the border is a “public safety crisis” that is in desperate need of fixing.
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“It’s just insane that we would allow things like Rachel’s murder to happen, and when I say ‘allow it,’ we allowed it by letting him into this country unchallenged,” Gahler said. “That shouldn’t happen to families in our country. This is preventable.”
Get the latest updates on the ongoing border crisis from the Fox News Digital immigration hub.