Police are searching for a man who killed Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at the University of Georgia who was dragged to a secluded area by a stranger during her morning jog and killed. A suspect was arrested, and the incident caused an uproar on campus.
The arrest of a Venezuelan man who entered the United States illegally and was allowed to stay while his immigration case was processed has put the tragedy at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Former President Donald Trump blamed President Joe Biden and his border policies for the fatal beating of an Augusta University student. A conservative news site blasted the “open border elite” for treating the deaths of women like Riley as “collateral damage.”
It’s a familiar rationale for Trump, who said when he was in the White House in 2016 that Mexicans “bring crime. They’re rapists. Some of them, I think, are good people.”
As president, he created an office for families whose loved ones were victims of violent immigration crimes, but that office was quickly dismantled under Biden.
The debate over America’s broken immigration system has become a major campaign issue as an unprecedented surge of immigrants strains budgets in cities including New York, Chicago and Denver and divides some Democrats.
Trump has stepped up his anti-immigration rhetoric, saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country.” He and other Republicans say immigrants commit crimes more frequently than U.S. citizens, although the evidence does not support those claims.
Biden criticized Republicans for opposing a bipartisan border security deal after Trump denounced it. He will visit the Texas border city of Brownsville on Thursday, while Trump will visit Eagle Pass, another Texas border city.
Trump posted on his social media site, “Crooked Joe Biden’s border incursions are destroying our country and killing our citizens! The horrific death of Laken Riley, 22, of the University of Georgia The murder should never have happened!”
“He’s an animal that comes in,” Trump said Tuesday on Michigan radio station WFDF.
Democrats were even more silent, with many mourning Riley’s death and some accusing Trump of exploiting the tragedy and using xenophobic rhetoric for political gain.
The White House expressed its “deepest condolences” to Riley’s family. “If people are found guilty, they should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” spokesman Angelo Fernandez Hernandez said.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, predicted Riley’s death “will change this election.”
“This is a parent’s worst nightmare,” the South Carolina Republican said.
Many studies have found that immigrants are less attracted to violent crime than native-born citizens. A report released by the National Academy of Sciences based on data from the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2012 to 2018 found that native-born residents of the United States are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes than illegal immigrants in the country.
Another article in the journal Criminology analyzed multiple data sources from 1990 to 2014 and concluded that increases in illegal immigration often coincide with decreases in violent crime or are not significantly correlated.
A study published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group, found that immigrants have been imprisoned at lower rates than U.S.-born white men since 1960.
Ran Abramitzky, an economics professor at Stanford University, said: “Democrats are increasingly positive when talking about immigrants and pointing to their contributions to the United States, while Republicans remain negative when talking about immigrants and There is an increasing focus on crime and legality issues.” link between immigration and crime, referring to an analysis of congressional statements from decades ago.
Jon Ferrey, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in the Trump administration and now director of investigations at the Center for Immigration Studies, dismissed the study. He pointed out that immigrants who enter the United States without legal permission say that they are committing crimes by coming to the United States.
“The impact will be felt for many years, even beyond the tenure of this administration,” Ferre said. “They can continue to ignore it, but the American people are paying attention.”
Families of victims have heartbreaking stories to tell.
In 2010, retired entertainment and publishing executive Don Rosenberg lost his 25-year-old son, Drew, when a Honduran man who was in that country illegally hit him multiple times with a car in San Francisco. to him and try to escape. When he spoke with families whose loved ones had been killed by immigrants, he concluded that authorities ignored them and even protected the perpetrators.
“I think my case is an anomaly. No, my case is the rule,” said Rosenberg, president of Advocates for Victims of Crime Against Illegal Aliens.
Rosenberg said that unless news organizations pay more attention, these high-profile cases won’t resonate with voters “because Trump only talks to people who support Trump.”
The man accused of killing Riley, Jose Ibarra, was arrested in September 2022 for illegal entry near El Paso, Texas, amid an unprecedented surge in immigration, and was later released. Cases are heard in immigration court.
At the time, Border Patrol was releasing immigrants and ordering court appearances at immigration offices, which were not even scheduled. This practice, which extended the time it took to resolve immigration cases by several years, essentially stopped in February 2023.
It was unclear whether Ibarra, 26, followed the instructions or applied for asylum. Federal officials said he was arrested by New York police in August on child endangerment charges and released, though New York officials said Sunday they had no record of the arrest.
Ibera was living in Athens, Georgia, when Riley was killed last week. His attorney has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Trump mentioned the murder for the first time on Friday, calling it part of what he called “Biden’s immigration crimes.” It comes after a group of immigrants brawled with police in New York, sparking political outrage and reigniting debate over policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Influential conservative website Breitbart News linked Riley’s death to other unlawful killings of women in the country, including Kate Steinle, who was shot to death on a crowded San Francisco pier in 2015. “Their deaths were 100% avoidable,” the website said.
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