A digital ad campaign blaming the killing of Rachel Morin on President Joe Biden’s immigration policies is targeting audiences in swing states this week.
The roughly $200,000 ad blitz comes as Biden prepares for his first debate this election season with former president Donald Trump, who has seized on Morin’s death to attack his Democratic opponent’s border policies. The ad campaign was bankrolled by a conservative group called “Building America Better,” which had already spent more than $724,000 this year on two ads, according to Federal Elections Commission filings. No disclosure about the most recent ad campaign had been filed with the commission Thursday afternoon.
Both of those election year ads also play on fears over immigration, interspersing news reels of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants with statements from either of the presidential candidates.
Morin’s killing immediately reached national attention last August after the mother of five was found dead on the Ma & Pa Trail in Bel Air. But months later, after authorities identified the suspect as a 23-year-old from El Salvador who entered the United States unlawfully, the Harford County homicide quickly became the latest center of the nationwide flareup over U.S. immigration and border policy.
Thursday’s debate comes amid that flareup. Trump, who has long made inflammatory statements about immigrants, and other Republicans have targeted the Biden administration on immigration over the Morin case, claiming deficiencies have allowed criminals into the country. Democrats have responded by noting the GOP’s rejection of border enforcement measures that could have aided Biden politically during the election year.
A website for Building America’s Future does not disclose much more than its other campaigns, which include a six-figure ad targeting swing states opposing the Biden administration’s proposed rules that ban menthol cigarettes.
The tax-exempt group formed in 2020 named Chris Jankowski, who ran a super PAC supporting Trump’s former rival Ron DeSantis, as one of its officers in a 2023 filing to Virginia business regulators. Jankowski’s name was removed in an annual report filed Thursday morning that names several other Washington-area political strategists in its list of officers.
Morin’s mother has “had a chance to view” the 60-second video that anchors the digital ad campaign but “doesn’t have any comments right now,” said Randolph Rice, an attorney who represents Patty Morin and other family members. Shortly after 23-year-old Victor Martinez-Hernandez was arrested in connection with Morin’s killing, Trump called Morin’s mother, Patty, to express his condolences. Patty said she was “deeply touched by President Trump’s kindness and concern” in an earlier statement released by the family’s attorney.
Matthew McMahon, the father of Rachel Morin’s oldest daughter, said he had viewed the video and is “appalled.”
“They are using Rachel to divide the country,” McMahon said, noting that he felt the video held an “underlying tone of division.”
He said the video “seems to highlight to me that it is not about Rachel being murdered” but rather about the suspect, “because they wouldn’t care if it was a citizen of the U.S.”
He said that Rachel’s estate — administered by his and Morin’s daughter, Faye — was not contacted by the video’s producers.
“Nobody even bothered to ask Rachel’s estate how they feel about the video, or even a heads up that they were going to make it,” McMahon said. “It doesn’t sit well with me because she is being used.”
When asked if he would watch the debate Thursday, McMahon said he took the time to set a reminder to make sure he doesn’t miss it because he is prepared “to watch Rachel be used” as a “campaign issue.”
“This isn’t how people should be remembering Rachel because they are setting everything that was Rachel aside so they can focus on the legal status of the person that attacked her,” McMahon said, describing Morin as open, forgiving and compassionate. “Rachel was a uniter.”
The digital ad blitz, which the conservative group said also includes “mobile billboards and 2D projections on famous buildings,” is anchored by a 60-second video that opens with a woman with similar characteristics to Morin walking in a wooded area.
“It just keeps happening,” a female narrator says over the dramatization of Morin’s final moments. The voice mentions Laken Riley, a nursing student whose death has also become a flashpoint in the recent immigration debate. The voice in the ad says that Riley “wasn’t the first” and “in Joe Biden’s America, sadly she won’t be the last” before a gasp is heard and the footage from the woods cuts out to show news coverage of Morin’s death and Martinez-Hernandez’s arrest.
The ad, which closes by calling Biden’s border policies “a nightmare for American women,” will be shown on digital platforms in seven swing states that are key to this year’s presidential election — Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Georgia, according to the group sponsoring it.
The group spent more than $685,000 on a previous ad campaign focused on Riley’s killing.
One of those ads uses clips of Biden in an attempt to portray him as unwilling to control the border, juxtaposing his statements with newsreels of crime coverage and Trump’s controversial words from his 2016 presidential campaign launch — that immigrants from Mexico are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
