In a House Judiciary Committee markup this week, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) delivered remarks that managed to be both explosive and callous — sparking outrage from Republicans and victims’ families alike.
During debate over the Kayla Hamilton Act, legislation named for a 20-year-old woman brutally murdered by an MS-13 gang member who entered the country as an unaccompanied minor, Crockett dismissed the very premise of the bill.
“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 shouted at her Republican colleagues. “Stop just throwing a random dead person’s name on something for your own political expediency.”
Those words — “random dead person” — landed like a gut punch. Kayla Hamilton was not random. She was a young woman in Maryland with dreams and a future, savagely cut down when Walter Javier Martinez, a 17-year-old illegal immigrant and confirmed MS-13 member, sexually assaulted and strangled her. Martinez was sentenced to 70 years in prison earlier this year.
The bill at issue, introduced by Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.), would require the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct thorough background checks on unaccompanied alien children before placing them into communities. The measure directly addresses the very loophole that allowed Martinez into the country and into Kayla’s orbit.
Fry didn’t mince words in his response: “To dismiss her life so callously is not only disgusting rhetoric, it’s shameful behavior. Let me be clear: Kayla Hamilton was not just a random person. She was a young woman with a family and a future.”
Kayla’s own mother, Tammy Nobles, has voiced strong support for the bill, telling Fox News Digital in July that if proper background checks had been conducted, her daughter’s killer would never have been placed in their community.
“If that had happened in the case of Kayla’s murderer,” Nobles said, “authorities would have known he was an MS-13 gang member.”
Crockett attempted to reframe her remarks by contrasting them with Republicans’ supposed neglect of Epstein’s victims, but the damage was already done. Her outburst reinforced a troubling pattern: Democrats downplaying crimes committed by illegal immigrants, even in the face of preventable tragedies.
