Democrats on Laken Riley’s Accused Killer: ‘No Human Being Is Illegal’

Clarke County Sheriff's Office
CCSO
John Binder

Democrats are furious President Joe Biden used the term “illegal” during his State of the Union (SOTU) address to describe the man accused of murdering Laken Riley in Athens, Georgia, in February.

Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, went for a morning jog around the University of Georgia (UGA) campus on February 22. When she did not return for hours her roommate called the police, who began searching for her.

Later that day, Riley’s body was found brutally disfigured in a wooded area near Lake Herrick. On February 23, police arrested 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela with an arrest record in Athens as well as New York City, who was released into the United States after arriving at the southern border in September 2022.

At his fourth SOTU address, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) shouted out and called on Biden to acknowledge Riley’s murder. Biden did so, though mispronouncing her name as “Lincoln Riley.”

“An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right,” Biden said.

In response, Democrats and open borders activists have rebuked Biden’s use of the term “illegal” to describe Ibarra. Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-IL), for instance, wrote that he is “extremely disappointed” that Biden called Ibarra an “illegal.”

On CNN, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) immediately suggested that Biden should have used the term “undocumented” to describe Ibarra rather than “illegal.”

Likewise, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) made a veiled attack on Biden calling Ibarra an “illegal,” writing on Twitter that “no human being is illegal.”

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), often considered the spokesman for the open borders lobby within the Democrat party, said it is “incendiary and wrong” for Biden to describe Ibarra as an “illegal.”

Marisa Limon Garza, with the group Las Americas, told Politico that Biden calling Ibarra an “illegal” was “painful” and a “racist trope.”

“At best, it’s like when my father, a septuagenarian, makes an unintentional gaffe or foible,” Garza said. “At worst, it’s a tired, racist trope. Either way, he needs to do better.”

Yareliz Mendez-Zamora, with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, echoed Omar’s response, writing in a statement that “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL!”

Despite Biden’s use of the term “illegal” at Thursday’s SOTU address, his administration has worked tirelessly to ban the terms “alien,” “illegal alien,” and “illegal immigrant” from being used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Instead, DHS officials have been ordered to use the terms “noncitizen” and “undocumented noncitizen” to describe illegal aliens. Most recently, the White House described newly arrived border crossers as “newcomers.”

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

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