This past Monday, I was in Maryland, and I had the privilege of meeting Patty Morin. I say privilege because when you stand in the presence of a mother who has buried her daughter, a mother who channels her grief into a fight for justice, you are in the presence of something sacred. Something that should humble every politician, every judge, and every governor who has decided that ideological posturing matters more than the lives of American citizens.

Patty’s daughter was Rachel Morin. A 37-year-old mother of five children. Let that settle in for a moment. Five children. Rachel went for a walk on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air, Maryland, on August 5, 2023. She never came home. Her body was discovered the next day. She had been brutally raped and murdered.

Her killer was Victor Martinez-Hernandez, a citizen of El Salvador who was already wanted for murder in his home country. Yes, wanted for murder. In January 2023, an arrest warrant was issued for Martinez-Hernandez after he was accused of killing a young woman in El Salvador. Rather than face justice, he fled north. He was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and removed under Title 42 three separate times in January and February of 2023. And yet, on February 13, 2023, he successfully crossed the border near El Paso.

Once inside our Constitutional Republic, Martinez-Hernandez did not become a model resident. In March 2023, he allegedly assaulted a nine-year-old girl and her mother during a home invasion in Los Angeles. Five months later, he raped and murdered Rachel Morin on a walking trail in Maryland. A trail where families walk, where children ride bikes, where mothers should be safe.

In April 2025, a jury convicted Martinez-Hernandez of first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree rape, kidnapping, and sexual offense. The jury deliberated for less than one hour. In August, he was sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional life sentence and 40 years. Justice was served, but only after a 10-month nationwide manhunt and only because the Harford County Sheriff’s Office, under Sheriff Jeff Gahler, had maintained a 287(g) agreement with federal immigration authorities since 2016. That cooperation between local and federal law enforcement was instrumental in the investigation that brought Rachel’s killer to justice.

Here is where this story turns from tragedy to outrage.

On February 17, 2026, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed legislation banning all 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The very mechanism that helped catch Rachel Morin’s killer. Gone. The bill passed along party lines, Democrats in favor, Republicans opposed. It was the first bill Governor Moore signed in the 2026 legislative session. The very first priority of Maryland’s Democratic lawmakers was to ensure that local law enforcement could no longer enforce the law by cooperating with ICE to identify and remove criminal illegal immigrants from their communities.

Patty Morin pleaded with the Governor not to sign that bill. Sheriff Gahler urged state leaders to preserve the 287(g) program that had served Harford County for over eight years. Republican Delegate Nino Mangione introduced the Rachel Morin Act, House Bill 85, which would have prohibited sanctuary policies across Maryland and mandated cooperation with federal immigration authorities. As Delegate Mangione said, “Sanctuary policies can be deadly. They’re dangerous. They need to end.”

None of it mattered to the Democrats who control the Maryland legislature.

I have written about this before in these pages. In the Preamble to our Constitution, “We the People” articulated the fundamental tasks of our government: to establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility. When I wrote about these principles last September, I listed the names of young women whose lives were taken because our government failed them. Laken Riley. Jocelyn Nungaray. Kate Steinle. Rachel Morin. The list grows, and yet the political class in states like Maryland has decided that protecting criminal illegal immigrants from federal law enforcement is more important than protecting mothers, daughters, and children from violent predators.

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution is clear about the federal government’s responsibility to protect the states from invasion. The Supremacy Clause in Article VI establishes that federal law, when exercised in pursuance of the Constitution, supersedes state law. There is no constitutional provision, none, that grants a state governor the authority to prohibit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. What part of this is constitutional? Simple answer: there ain’t.

Martinez-Hernandez was deported three times and still got in. He committed violent crimes in Los Angeles and was never caught. He murdered Rachel Morin on a walking trail in a quiet Maryland community. And now the State of Maryland has decided that the next Martinez-Hernandez, the next violent criminal who enters illegally and preys upon its citizens, will find it even easier to evade justice.

When I met Patty Morin, I saw in her eyes what I have seen in the eyes of Gold Star families, a pain that never fully heals but a resolve that never breaks. She is not a political operative. She is a mother who lost her daughter to a preventable crime, and she is watching her state’s government make it easier for that crime to happen again.

Governor Moore, the blood of the next Rachel Morin is on your hands. You had a choice, and you chose ideology over the safety of Maryland’s citizens. You signed a law that dismantles the very cooperation that brought a rapist and murderer to justice. Patty Morin stood before you and told you what that cooperation meant, what it cost her family when it was not enough, and what it will cost the next family when it no longer exists.

I am reminded of a quote commonly (and maybe mistakenly) attributed to Roman Statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero: “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.” What is happening in Maryland, and in every sanctuary jurisdiction in America, is nothing short of a betrayal of the social contract between the governed and the government. We cede our protection to the state so that the state will protect us. When the state refuses, when it actively undermines that protection, it has broken its oath.

American citizens deserve to be protected from violent criminals who have no legal right to be in this country.

It was an honor to meet her. It is a disgrace that she has to fight this battle at all.

Republished from ACRU Action Fund.