BALTIMORE — Border control issues loom over Thursday’s presidential debate following the apprehension of a suspect in a Harford County murder case who entered the United States unlawfully.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumed nominee at next month’s convention, will meet Thursday night in Atlanta in the first debate of the campaign. Immigration has become a central issue, with Republicans accusing Biden of not keeping the border secure and Democrats countering that the GOP is playing election-year politics by rejecting border enforcement measures that could have aided Biden politically.
“Certainly I hope the issue of immigration would come up,” Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly, a Republican and Trump backer, said in an interview Wednesday.
He said the influx of undocumented migrants r eached “home base” in Harford following the killing of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother of five whose body was found last August in a wooded area near the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air.
The suspect, Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, is a native of El Salvador who entered the United States unlawfully last year, according to Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler. He was arrested June 14 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and extradited last Thursday to Maryland.
“We’ve not been in a position too often — since John Wilkes Booth — where we’re so intimately touched, I don’t think, by these national policies that are really just failures,” Cassilly said. Booth, a Harford County native, was President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin in 1865.
Trump has seized on Morin’s homicide to attack Biden’s border policies.
Meanwhile, Biden recently imposed significant restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S., then offered potential citizenship to about 500,000 people without legal status who are married to U.S. citizens and have been living in the country for more than a decade.
Biden’s border restrictions order came after Republicans twice rejected a bipartisan border security deal earlier this year after Trump opposed it. The legislation, shelved by the GOP on a procedural vote, included funding new Border Patrol agents and was intended to reduce border crossings. Congressional Maryland Democrats accused Republicans of rejecting the bill because they wanted to preserve border control as a campaign issue.
But Erin Layman, 49, Morin’s half-sister, said Wednesday: “The government has opened the front door and we need to shut this down. And if Rachel’s story can help do that, all the better.”
On the day the defendant was brought back to Harford, Trump called Morin’s mother to express his condolences. He and his campaign have cited her case multiple times.
“Our family is honored that President Trump mentioned my sister’s name,” Layman said. “Not only did he mention her name but he reached out to our family and spoke to Rachel’s mother for 40 minutes on the phone.”
Layman said she attended a recent Trump rally in Philadelphia, and “the first thing he said to me was ‘I had an amazing conversation with Patricia’ and that is a blessing that with everything he has going on, that he cared enough to reach out to our family.”
Trump has long made immigration a central issue in his presidency and his campaigns.
Vowing to put American workers first and protect the nation’s security, he threatened in 2018 to close the southern border and impose tariffs on Mexican goods. He has called Mexico an “abuser” of the United States and said Mexicans are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
The first presidential debate of 2024 between the two candidates is airing live on CNN on Thursday at 9 p.m., with anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash moderating.
Amanda Smith is a dedicated U.S. correspondent with a passion for uncovering the stories that shape the nation. With a background in political science, she provides in-depth analysis and insightful commentary on domestic affairs, ensuring readers are well-informed about the latest developments across the United States.
