Crime victim families endorse Trump at border: ‘He needs to be in office’

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday alongside the families of two women who were allegedly raped and murdered by illegal immigrants.

“We’re honored to really be with these incredible people and in particular with some grieving families. And this is a group of people that I’ve gotten to know,” Trump said during a press conference, just feet from the border wall in Cochise County, Arizona.

Trump listed more than a dozen incidents of children and women being sexually assaulted or killed by illegal immigrants, including the deaths of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray of Texas and 37-year-old Rachel Morin of Maryland.

“They loved like as much as you can love someone. I’ve spent time with all of them. And what goes through my mind is I don’t know how the hell they can take it,” Trump said.

Trump turned over part of the press conference to two families on site who had been personally affected by “migrant crime,” a term Trump has coined for criminal offenses committed by illegal immigrants who were admitted into the country during the Biden administration.

Republicans have used such anecdotes to make illegal immigration the centerpiece of their election pitch.

Alexis Nungaray, the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, said the months since her daughter’s death have been “very hard.”

“She was left with no clothing from the waist down, was thrown in a bayou, left strangled to death,” said Alexis Nungaray. “There was over 300 detention beds that [the suspects] should have been at because they were detained and they were released when they shouldn’t have been released. They had one ankle monitor. Didn’t stop anything. So now I have to go through the rest of my life with my son always asking for his sister.”

“I hope everybody could hear my pain to just please, please, he needs to be in office,” Alexis Nungaray said, referring to Trump, who stood behind her. “We need border control. We need to stop this. We need to stop losing our littles.”

Jocelyn Nungaray was found deceased on June 16. Court records said Jocelyn Nungaray had snuck out of her home late the previous night and gone to 7-Eleven, where she encountered the two suspects after they had partied at a local restaurant.

The two men were alleged to have lured her to a private area and then raped and strangled her before throwing her body into a creek to get rid of DNA evidence. One suspect reportedly searched how to get out of the United States before police arrested them.

Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, said her daughter and mother of five was sexually assaulted and killed last August while on a jog on a local walking trail when she was attacked. The suspect, illegal immigrant Victor Martinez-Hernandez of El Salvador, was arrested this summer by police in Oklahoma.

“She was brutally beaten, raped, and then stuffed into a drain pipe,” said Patty Morin. “Because of this open border, we’ve had not just my daughter, but we’ve actually had two in the same county that were from where illegal immigrants have come in and have caused rape and murder of our citizens.”

Trump’s visit to the border is part of a week of counterprogramming as Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris is set to accept her party’s nomination in Chicago.

“As Kamala gives her convention speech tonight, she will not mention the victim. She won’t even talk about them, or now that she sees us maybe she will,” said Trump.

At the time of Trump’s arrival, police were searching for Ronald Lee Syrvud after learning that the 66-year-old man had allegedly threatened to assassinate Trump during his visit to the border Thursday.

The Secret Service allowed Trump to step out of his motorcade vehicle but kept him from getting too close to the border wall, instead keeping him with his back to unused steel posts of border wall on the ground and facing reporters.

Trump met with members from the National Border Patrol Council, the Border Patrol union, as well as local elected officials, including Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, the Republican incumbent.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), also held an immigration-focused event in Valdosta, Georgia, on Thursday as the campaign focused on messaging about the border.

The Biden administration has admitted more than 5.3 million illegal immigrants into the U.S., and another nearly 2 million illegal immigrants have been observed sneaking into the country, according to a House Judiciary Committee report released earlier this summer.

In total, more than 10 million people have been encountered at the nation’s borders since February 2021 — more than during any other one-term or two-term administration.