(WBFF) — In response to Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and recent remarks she made while debating the Kayla Hamilton Act, Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler is firing back.
“For someone who sits in Congress and at any level of elected office, who feels so dismissive of her life, or any other crime victims life, we have so many people across this country daily who lose their lives to act of violence, to be so dismissive of that act is just reprehensible,” Gahler said.
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Kayla Hamilton was raped and murdered in 2022 in Aberdeen, Maryland. Walter Javier Martinez, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 70 years in prison. He was from El Salvador and entered the U.S. illegally, just months before Hamilton’s murder. Along with having a criminal record, he was also a member of the MS-13 gang. He was in the U.S. with the unaccompanied alien child status, which is reserved for minors with no lawful immigration status and no parent or legal guardian in the United States to provide care and physical custody.
The proposed Kayla Hamilton Act requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to consider additional information when it makes placement determinations for unaccompanied alien children in its custody.
“You take a situation, and then you exploit what has happened to not only that person, but you exploit those families, and you make it a game,” Crockett previously said during a committee debate. “Stop just throwing a random dead person’s name on something for your own political expediency.”
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“I mean, maybe she’s just a random woman from Texas,” Gahler said in response. “And then, you know, if the Speaker of the House, when he calls on her that way, if he uses that way instead of the normal way of addressing a member of Congress, maybe it’ll get through her head that what she did was not proper or caring in any way”
Tammy Nobles, Kayla Hamilton’s mom said she was “furious” and “disgusted” by Rep. Crockett’s comments.
“No murder victim is a random person,” Nobles said. “She she had a life. She was a real person. She had hopes, she had dreams, and this monster that shouldn’t have even been here in the first place, you know, took her life.”
Prior to the statement, Rep. Crockett argued that Republicans were ignoring the alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein and instead focusing, politicizing and “exploiting” victims for which legislation is named after in certain cases.
Nobles, who hopes the legislation related to Kayla Hamilton will pass, said she does not feel lawmakers have exploited Hamilton’s case for political gain. Instead, she said she is the one leading the charge for change.
“I’m the one that started talking about it in the first place. I’m the one that wanted something done. You can’t solve a problem unless you have somebody talking about it. I’m doing this for Kayla. I don’t understand how people don’t some people don’t understand. I’m doing this for my daughter because I loved her and she didn’t deserve to go down like that,” Nobles said.
“I want her to be remembered for the beautiful person that she was,” she added.
“We’ve had two women lose their lives at the hands two of our residents of our community lose their lives at the hand of criminal hands of criminal illegal aliens in a violent fashion. And that story is told repeatedly across this country. You’re not cherry picking. You’re describing a problem that exists in the criminal justice system and the security of our nation,” Gahler added.
Rep. Crockett’s office did not respond to request for comment.
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