Republican nominee Donald Trump invited the family members of victims impacted by the policies of the Biden-Harris administration to his press conference Tuesday ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ major campaign speech in Washington, D.C.
The former president held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago where he invited angel mom Tammy Nobles, who lost her daughter to the brutality of an MS-13 member, and gold star mother-in-law Christy Shamblin who lost her daughter-in-law, Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee, during the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The victims came forward to link the tragedies to Harris’ policies before she gave a major speech at the National Mall Tuesday.
Nobles’ daughter, Kayla Hamilton, died on July 27, 2022, after 17-year-old MS-13 gang member Walter Martinez allegedly raped and strangled her to death with a telephone cord in Aberdeen, Maryland.
“I just wanted to say that [the Department of] Homeland Security did not do their job, Health and Human Services did not do their job, the Biden-Harris administration did not do their job,” Nobles said. “If they would have done their job, maybe that one phone call to El Salvador, maybe my daughter would still be alive today. Kayla was a very beautiful, young lady inside and out. She was independent, learning to become independent, she had two jobs, she overcame obstacles dealing with autism and was able to find the job that she loved. She loved animals, especially her cat Oreo and she cared about the homeless. She loved God, and she loved going to church and her life was just ripped from her 3 days after she celebrated her 20th birthday.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that Martinez was involved with a violent MS-13 gang and resided in the U.S. illegally, according to WMAR 2 News. He reportedly entered the U.S. through Texas illegally in March 2022 before Border Patrol released him into Maryland to live with a sponsor.
Trump said Harris’ border and economic policies, along with her actions toward the Afghanistan withdrawal, are “disqualifying” for her to serve as commander-in-chief.
“Kamala’s cruel and immoral actions on our border are actually disqualifying in my opinion. She’s unfit, she’s an unfit person and she knows this is going on,” Trump said. “She didn’t call anybody, including the 13 soldiers that were so needlessly killed in Afghanistan with that horrible moment in time when our country just lost all respect from the whole world when that happened … Kamala has also caused untold misery through her destruction of our economy.”
Shamblin’s daughter-in-law, Marine Sergeant Gee, was one of the thirteen service members who died during the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021, in which Harris had bragged about being the last person in the room during the administration’s decision to withdraw.
“[Gee] was the cornerstone of a very large family,” Shamblin emotionally said. “And instead of planning family gatherings, and holiday meals, and Christmases and baby showers, our family and thousands of other families plan outings at funeral gravesites and that’s where we as a family celebrate my daughter-in-law at Arlington National Cemetery because she is in the ground. Her story isn’t unique to our family, she’s just ours. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of wounded veterans who came home from that war who need our help and who are ignored by our current administration.”
The former president attended a ceremony honoring the 13 service members on the third anniversary of the withdrawal, while President Joe Biden and Harris were not in attendance.
Federal immigration law under the Biden-Harris administration allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “parole” migrants instead of detaining them for “humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” which has been challenged by many Republican-led states.
Illegal encounters exceeded 2 million in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, largely surpassing encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
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