The murder of Laken Riley took center stage during Thursday night’s State of the Union address. Riley was a 22-year-old student who was killed last month at the University of Georgia. The suspect in her murder is a Venezuelan migrant whom officials say was illegally in the U.S.
During the Republican rebuttal, Riley’s murder was brought up by Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. “She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland. Y’all … as a mom, I can’t quit thinking about this. I mean, this could have been my daughter. This could have been yours.”
The claim that immigration brings on a crime wave can be traced back to the first immigrants who arrived in the U.S. Ever since the 1980s and ’90s, this false narrative saw a resurgence.