Mother of Kayla Hamilton launches $100M lawsuit against Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services
Tammy Nobles, the mother of Kayla Hamilton, a 20-year-old autistic woman who was killed by an undocumented MS-13 gang member in Aberdeen in 2022, has filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
California-based attorney Brian Claypool and Maryland co-counsel Daniel Cox filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, Monday.
The suit claims that DHS and DHHS were negligent and violated protocol when processing Walter Javier Martinez when he illegally entered the U.S. in March 2022.
Martinez was 17 when he was arrested and charged on Jan. 15, 2023, with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape, a third-degree sex offense, robbery, assault and theft in Hamilton’s killing. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in August and Harford County Circuit Judge Yolanda L. Curtin sentenced him to life in prison with all but 70 years suspended.
Martinez’s defense counsel said during an August hearing that Martinez illegally entered the U.S. from the Rio Grande sector of the United States-Mexico border as an unaccompanied minor. When the 16-year-old crossed the border, he was taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol and was released to a sponsor’s home in Frederick County, Maryland.
The lawsuit alleges that DHS employees were negligent in their handling of Martinez at the border and failed to check with the El Salvador government on Martinez’s criminal history. Martinez was a member of the MS-13 gang, according to his attorney, and the lawsuit alleges that DHS employees failed to follow protocols that instructed them to perform a visual inspection of Martinez’s body, to check for gang-related tattoos that would have disqualified him from entering the U.S.
The suit also alleges that Martinez was insufficiently vetted, and that “key warnings” were ignored including that years before he entered the U.S., Martinez was arrested in El Salvador for “illicit association” with MS-13, a violent international gang.
“Had DHS and DHHS vetted Martinez according to policy, he would have been placed in a secure facility for criminal unaccompanied minors,” the lawsuit states. “At no time should Martinez have been roaming free in Aberdeen, Maryland.”
The lawsuit claims department officials also failed to verify that Martinez was being released to family members as his sponsors in the U.S.
“There were clear inconsistencies in the DHS and DHHS records regarding the identity of the relative to whom the assailant was released to,” Claypool stated in a news release about the lawsuit. “The operational negligence committed by DHS carried over into DHHS whose operational negligence further sealed Ms. Hamilton’s fate.”
According to FOX45 News, a spokesperson from DHS said in a statement: “Our hearts go out to Ms. Hamilton’s family. We do not comment on pending litigation. The men and women of DHS take their responsibility to secure our homeland very seriously.”
In a statement from HHS, a spokesperson said, “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is deeply saddened by this tragic loss and our heart goes out to the family. HHS does not comment on potential litigation.”
Hamilton was killed on July 27, 2022, four months after Martinez entered the U.S.
The lawsuit states that 16-year-old Martinez was renting a room in a mobile home from another undocumented migrant before the murder. The lawsuit alleges that Martinez broke into Hamilton’s mobile home in Aberdeen when she was home alone then raped and strangled her to death with a phone cord.
The lawsuit alleges additional negligence by the DHS and DHHS when they placed Martinez with Maryland Child Protective Services in group foster homes in Baltimore County and Harford County and allowed him to be enrolled in public high schools. Martinez attended Edgewood High School until his arrest in January 2023. The school system told FOX45 News, it was not informed that Martinez was a gang member and murder suspect.
“Ms. Hamilton’s death was caused in whole by the institutional failures and operational negligence of DHS and DHHS in that these entities negligently, recklessly, carelessly and/or egregiously failed to follow proper protocol and policies for detained at the border,” the lawsuit states. “DHS and DHHS utterly and carelessly failed in their obligations which allowed the tragic murder of Ms. Hamilton to occur.”