Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Briefs Members of the Media with a Special Guest, Apr. 16, 2025

Good afternoon, everybody. President Trump campaigned on the promise to secure our homeland and deport violent alien criminals from our communities. That is why the American people overwhelmingly reelected him back to this office. And it's why the American people defeated the Democrat Party in devastating fashion. Today, we have officially learned Democrat officials still refuse to accept the will of the American people. Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen rushed to Dulles Airport this morning to fly to El Salvador, potentially using taxpayer dollars to demand the release of deported illegal alien Ms. 13 terrorists. The Democrats and the media in this room have continually and wrongly labeled Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a Maryland father. There is no Maryland father. Let me reiterate. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien, Ms. 13 gang member and foreign terrorist who was deported back to his home country. And when Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally arrested, he was wearing a sweatshirt with rolls of money covering the ears, mouth and eyes of presidents on various currency denominations. This is a known MS.13 gang symbol of hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil. Abrego Garcia was also arrested with two other well known members of the vicious MS.13 gang. And two separate judges found that Abrego Garcia was a member of Ms. 13. And that finding has never been disputed. And just this morning, it was revealed through Maryland court documents that Abrego Garcia's wife petitioned for an order of protection against him for two instances of domestic violence in May of 2021. And here is the order right here. The court ordered that the respondent committed the following acts of abuse once in May of 2021, assault in any degree. And on May 4th of 2021, he punched and scratched his wife, ripped off her shirt and grabbed and bruised her. This is from a court in Maryland. So not only are Democrats rushing to defend an illegal criminal, foreign terrorist gang member, but also an apparent woman beater. To set all of that aside, the basic fact that he was illegally inside our country and had a lawful deportation order made him subject to removal back to his home country of El Salvador. And if he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again. Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again. And the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the President of the United States and the Secretary of State could not be compelled to forcibly retrieve this citizen of El Salvador who is currently locked up in a maximum security prison in his home country due to his MS.13 membership. To remind the media and the Democrat Party. MS.13 are among the most vicious and dangerous individuals in this world. They pose a direct threat to the United States, El Salvador and any other country who maintains basic law and order. Ms. 13 rapes innocent girls and women, runs sex trafficking operations, murders for sports, and terrorizes law abiding people. That's why El Salvador President Bukele made it clear this week that he will not be releasing this MS.13 gang member from his prison. But that is not enough. All of that is not enough to stop the Democrat Party from their lies. The number one issue they are focused on right now is bringing back this illegal alien terrorist to America. But where are the Democrats applauding the fact that southern border crossings just hit a historic low? Where are the Democrats supporting our brave men and women of law enforcement who are putting their lives on the line every single day to arrest the violent illegal alien invaders that the previous administration allowed into our country? And where are the Democrats when innocent Americans are victimized by illegal criminals that Joe Biden let in? It's appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens. Nobody knows this more than the woman standing to my right, Patty Morin, whose beautiful daughter Rachel was brutally maimed and murdered at the hands of an illegal alien in August of 2023. Patty no longer has her daughter because of the failed Democrat Party's open border. And these are policies that President Trump is bringing an end to. Patty should not have to be here today, but she is. And we are grateful and we are honored for her willingness and her request to share her powerful story with the world. Thank you, Patty, for being here.

Thank you. A lot of you don't know the whole story about Rachel and about the crime that was committed against her. Even us, her family. We didn't know all the details. They kept most of it close to their chest, the detectives, because they didn't want to do anything to hurt the case. They wanted to keep the integrity of the case. So they kept everything close. I sat for the last two weeks in her trial and we saw layer upon layer upon layer of evidence against the accused, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. And the things that we thought, well, maybe this might have happened, we didn't know. But when we were at the trial, we got all the puzzle pieces and I want to share some of those things with you. You know that Rachel's a 37 year old mother. She has five children. We've walked the trail for the last 25 years that we've lived in Maryland. It's a safe place for our family. It's where we go to get a little bit of New England, because that's where we're from, New England. When she went on that trail that day, she was not planning on dying. She wasn't planning on walking to her death. She was planning on going to the grocery store with her girls. Afterwards, Victor Martinez, he waited for her. He waited for her to come closer. He saw her. He saw that there was nobody around. He attacked her. He dragged her 150ft, blood gushing from her head. It left 150 foot trail of her blood to the culverts where he took. He picked her up, he threw her against the wall of the tunnel and he raped her. But before he did that, he stopped on that trail and rocks still stained with her blood, he used them to hammer her head against those rocks. They say 20, at least 20 times they could count the cuts in her head. They said that when they did the autopsy. And I've seen the pictures. There's a six inch square in the back of her head where the skull is shattered the way that you would crush an eggshell. Pieces 3/4 of her brain hemorrhaged her right and left side of her face. Bashed in her beautiful face. Bashed in her head, Bashed in broken bones, fractures. He takes and he drags her some more. He drags her through the thorn bushes. She has all the scrapes and cuts on her body. There wasn't one inch of her body that didn't have some kind of injury, whether it's bruising, broken bones, contusions, the scratches. She had a fractured rib, fractured nose, fractured skull. And then he takes her into the tunnel and he picks her up. He throws her against the wall. Blood is gushing from her head. Her hair is soaked in blood. And they showed us pictures of her body against the wall outline. The blood outlined her body. And you could see where the blood ran down around her as he was raping her. And then he threw her down and raped her some more. And then he strangled her because he didn't want her to be able to live to tell the story. They said that when they did the autopsy on her neck, that one of the things they do is they open up the neck and they look to see how far the injury is. And they went all the way down as far as an injury as possible. Hemorrhaging in the muscles because of how strong and violent the group was around her. These are the kind of people that have no, no compulsion. Like, to them, this is nothing. And when he was sitting in the courtroom, he actually looked like he thought he was going to be set free. There was no remorse on his face at all. This person took my daughter so violently and so gruesomely and so graphically that they sealed the pictures because I don't want my granddaughters to see these pictures. These are the kind of criminals President Trump wants to remove from our country. These are the kind of criminals that we need to remove from our country. We are American citizens. Why should we allow people like this, violent criminals that have no conscience at all, to murder our mothers, our sisters, our daughters? I don't understand why there's even any kind of problem with this. And it's not that it's political like the left or the right, although I understand different parties have used it in the past. But we have to look at it as, we are American citizens. We need to protect our families, our borders, our children. I don't care about politics. Well, I do. But I want to preserve life. And that's the only reason why I have taken and spoken about Rachel all this time. If you're a mother here in the room, can you imagine standing there alive, you're alive, and someone comes and puts their hands into your chest and rips out your heart. That's what it feels like. It feels like a part of. Part of you is being ripped out of you. You can't even describe the pain, just like you can't describe to your husband what it feels like to carry a baby in your womb or to feel those first kicks, or to know just intuitively if it's a boy or a girl. It's only a thing that a mother knows. Why are we not protecting the American citizens? It's just common sense. Why are we not protecting our children? And to have a senator from Maryland who didn't even acknowledge or barely acknowledged my daughter and the brutal death that she endured, leaving her five children without a mother and now a grandbaby without a grandmother, so that he can use my taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that's not even an American citizen, why does that person have more right than I do or my daughter or my grandchildren? I don't understand this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And I just want to say that as a mother and as an American citizen, the President and our entire team, and I hope people in this room are grateful for your willingness to come here and your request to share your daughter's story. And I think the country hears you loud and clear. So thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Patty or for me? No. I have a question. No. Anybody? Okay, we'll see you all later. The president will be at his dinner later this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Thank you.

So sorry for your loss.

Thank you. Please tell the truth.

Exactly.

Tell the truth. Tell, like, how violent it really is. This is about protecting our children. It's more than just politics or votes or just anything. It's about national security, protecting Americans, protecting our children. Thank you. Thank you for listening. It.