Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is under fire after he appeared to close his eyes and lower his head during congressional testimony on the impacts of migrant crime on victims' families Tuesday – prompting criticism that leading Democrats are not taking the issue seriously and have disrespected those in mourning.
Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Dan Bishop, R-N.C., skewered the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee after the incident had people in the audience fuming.
The photo, with a box of tissues in the foreground, also shows an aide next to Nadler, looking at his cellphone as mothers who lost their daughters to suspected foreign rapists and killers shared their traumatic stories of loss with the committee.
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"One of the ladies that came with me, she took a picture of the Democrats on the other side as we were speaking and telling our stories, us, the mothers, mothers crying, telling our stories – and one of them is sleeping, and the other one's on his phone," said Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was brutally raped and murdered after police say an illegal immigrant attacked her on a jogging trail near her home in Maryland.
Cathie Groenewold, a church friend of Morin's who took the photo, said she found Nadler's demeanor deeply offensive.
"I was astounded at the careless attitude of Jerry Nadler and… the man sitting to his right," she told Fox News Digital. "They are pouring out their hearts, these women, who have lost their children to fentanyl and the most gruesome murders you could imagine, and they don’t have the common decency to sit up and give them their undivided attention."
Nadler and other Democrats appeared to treat the hearing as a partisan "stunt," she said.
"I'm sorry, but these women are drawing attention to a serious issue," she said. "It's not a stunt, and they weren't coerced into coming."
Morin's 37-year-old daughter was a mother of five and small business owner. Her alleged killer is a 23-year-old from El Salvador named Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, who is also suspected of killing another woman in his home country and sexually assaulting a woman and her 9-year-old daughter in a Los Angeles home invasion.
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Prosecutors have accused him of a horrific attack that left Morin with severe head trauma and covered in bruises in Bel Air, about 30 miles northeast of Baltimore. They found her remains stuffed into a culvert.
Speaking with Fox News Digital after the hearing, Patty Morin said she didn't go to be part of a partisan campaign, but she hoped to convince lawmakers to take migrant crime seriously.
"This is an American issue, and if we don't do something, families are going to be devastated," she said. "I don’t want another family, or another mother, to feel the way that I feel. I can’t describe to you the pain. And it’s not like it just goes away, like time heals all things. It doesn’t. The pain stays. You just learn to live with the pain."
RACHEL MORIN'S FAMILY SLAMS BIDEN-HARRIS FOR SILENCE OVER HER MURDER ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED BY ILLEGAL
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However, she said, she did not feel like her message got through to them.
"It was so disheartening," she said.
Nadler's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the start of the hearing, the longtime New York congressman began by sharing his condolences with the witnesses.
"I cannot imagine how difficult this loss has been for you," he said.
Then he pivoted to calling the proceedings "one more partisan hearing designed to divide us and to score political points before an election."
Among the eight witnesses, four lost their children in connection with the border crisis.
Sitting to the left of Morin was Anne Fundner, whose son Weston died of fentanyl poisoning that she blames on Mexican drug cartels and Chinese chemicals able to freely cross the southern border.
"My son did not have to die," she told the committee. "His life was cut short because of political decisions – decisions that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, those in positions of authority, have made."
WATCH: Jocelyn Nungaray's mother reveals horrific timeline of daughter's murder in hearing on open-border crime
On Morin's right was Alexis Nungaray, the mother of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, who was strangled, tied up and sexually assaulted before being thrown off a bridge, according to authorities.
Two illegals from Venezuela have been charged with capital murder in that case.
"Because of the Biden-Harris administration open border policies, catch and release, they were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program," Nungaray told lawmakers. "This meant that they were released into the United States. It was not even a full three weeks later that they would take my daughter Jocelyn Nungaray’s life."
Tammy Nobles also testified about the murder of her daughter, Kayla Hamilton, who was strangled and sexually assaulted in her own bed – at the hands of an MS-13 member who entered the U.S. illegally in 2020.
The suspect in that case, Walter Javier Martinez, is serving a 70-year prison sentence for the crime and confessed in writing to four murders and two rapes, Nobles said.
"This is not a political issue, this is a safety issue for everyone living here in the United States," she told the committee. "Not only was Kayla’s life put at risk and taken, so many other children and adults were at risk."
