A mother whose 20-year-old daughter was murdered, allegedly by a suspected MS-13 gang member who had been released into the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, gave an emotional plea to lawmakers on Tuesday to secure the southern border — warning that the crisis “is a safety issue for everyone living in the United States.”
“For me, this is not a political issue. This is a safety issue for everyone living in the United States,” Tammy Nobles, whose daughter Kayla Hamilton was killed last year, told lawmakers on a Judiciary Committee immigration subcommittee. “This could have been anyone’s daughter. Kayla wasn’t doing anything wrong, and she didn’t deserve to be murdered. I don’t want any other parents to live the nightmare I am living.”
“I am her voice now, and I am going to fight with everything I have to get her story told and bring awareness of the issue at the border,” she said.
A DHS official told Fox News Digital that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reviews both biometric and biographic information for those encountered at the border against several federal agencies’ databases.
“If we determine that the individuals pose a threat to national security or public safety, we deny admission, detain, remove, or turn them over to another agency for prosecution, as appropriate. We work closely with our interagency and international partners to detect and prevent people who pose national security or public safety risks from entering the United States,” the official said.
At the hearing, Nobles paid tribute to her daughter.
“The United States government has to secure our border. We need to properly vet all border crossers. The government could have placed a phone call to authorities in El Salvador and found out that he was a gang member. But they didn’t,” she said.
“If we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be nothing will bring my daughter back, nor the pain, nor fix. I’m not having her here and I want to prevent this from happening to someone else’s child. This is about protecting everyone here in the United States.”
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