In stark contrast to Trump, Biden said he would never “demonize” immigrants. (document)
Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress on Sunday demanded an apology from Joe Biden for the murder of an American student and the arrest of an undocumented immigrant – a case that helped put immigration issues at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a previous tweet that the president “is cowering to his supporters and showing respect to a man who doesn’t deserve respect.” He said the alleged killer “was an illegal immigrant who brutally murdered Laken Riley.”
Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was attacked late last month while on a morning jog in the woods at the University of Georgia in Athens.
A Venezuelan immigrant has been charged with murder and kidnapping. He had been stopped by police at least three times before, but was released each time.
Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, insist Riley’s murder was a direct result of Biden’s lax border enforcement.
One ardent Trump supporter, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, surprised Biden on Thursday as he walked to the House floor to deliver the State of the Union address by placing a sign with Riley’s name on it. The button was pressed into his hand and he was told, “Say her name.”
“Say her name”
Biden is not backing down. He pushed a button, said Riley’s name – mispronounced it – and called her “an innocent young woman killed by an illegal immigrant.”
He made the comments as he urged Republicans to join Democrats in supporting legislation to ease the immigration crisis.
But his use of the word “illegal” drew backlash from liberal commentators and immigration advocates, who said Biden should use the more politically correct term “undocumented.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said on
Biden retreated on Saturday, telling an MSNBC interviewer that he regretted his choice of words. “I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal,'” he said. “It’s ‘undocumented’.”
In stark contrast to Trump, Biden said he would never “demonize” immigrants.
a bad apology
While the expression of regret may have appeased some on the left, his opponents on the right said it confirmed their accusations that he was soft on immigration.
“Biden should apologize for apologizing to this killer,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia on Saturday. “He was illegal, I said he was an illegal alien.”
The former president, who accused immigrants of “poisoning the nation’s bloodstream,” said Riley would still be alive today if Biden had not loosened border enforcement.
House Speaker Johnson agreed with Trump, saying Biden “should apologize to Laken’s family.”
Biden backed a reform package to bolster border security that was negotiated at length by members of both parties but ultimately blocked by Republicans who said it did little that Biden couldn’t do on his own.
Democrats said Republicans had supported the bill before Trump announced his opposition; they said he was unwilling to hand his opponents a major political victory on a sensitive topic when they were both running for president.
The bill would limit asylum applications, provide for the hiring of more border police and allow the president to effectively close the border if more than 5,000 migrants try to cross illegally every day for a week.
Official figures show border police intercepted a record 302,000 migrants from Mexico in December, although the number fell sharply to 176,000 in January.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
