Vault: Her Life Mattered
Guest Contributor: Gianni Matteo
Originally Published: March 15th, 2024
“Let me be clear: No human being is illegal,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on X (formerly Twitter) in response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address on March 7, 2024. Omar’s statement is a very common mantra in the Democrat orthodoxy, but those who are uninitiated to the absurdity of progressive politics may ask what prompted her proclamation. The X post was made because Joe Biden correctly identifying Laken Riley’s killer as an “illegal,” and such language is tantamount to heresy to the American left.
Omar was not the only one to take issue with that excerpt of Biden’s address, as the Democrats were quick to scold their leader. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said “[Biden’s] rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong,” and other “Squad” members Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Cori Bush (D-MO) echoed Omar’s maxim.
The obvious thing missing in all of the popular Democrats’ statements is any compassion for Laken Riley and her family. The most pressing matter to the left was making sure that the illegal immigrant who murdered Laken Riley was not referred to as an “illegal” because that would be “dehumanizing.” The 22-year-old nursing student’s life was simply a footnote to these people in a competition to see who could score as many virtue-signaling points among the left.
Biden would maybe deserve a modicum of respect for going against his party and admitting that a violent illegal immigrant snuffed out the life of a promising young woman ...if he could say her name correctly. Our ‘energetic and forceful’ commander-in-chief mispronounced Laken Riley’s name as he confused it with Lincoln Riley, the USC head football coach.
Biden quickly reverted to his programming, saying, “But how many thousands of people are being killed by legals?” Regurgitating one of the more ludicrous progressive talking points that a nation should not be concerned with properly vetting migrants if the nation already has criminals in it. He also corrected himself the next day by saying the killer was “undocumented,” not “illegal.” Biden may have been close to stating the ultimate ridiculous leftist immigration talking point that “no human is illegal on ‘stolen’ land,” but this is only speculation.
Sadly, Americans being murdered by illegal immigrants is not a new occurrence. The Mollie Tibbets case made some waves in the mainstream media during 2018, but the thing that made Laken Riley’s story too big to be ignored by the establishment was the grisly details that emerged shortly after. The New York Post published a report from an affidavit that provided readers with graphic details of the murder and sparked even more exposure to the case.
A damage control report by NPR was also published shortly after the State of the Union Address, which said that research indicates immigrants commit less crime than American-born people. The report uses a common left-wing tactic of conflating legal and illegal immigrants and misses one key fact about crimes committed by illegal immigrants ...Approximately 0% of crimes committed by illegal immigrants on American soil need to happen as they, by definition, should not be in this country.
The fact of the matter is that Laken Riley’s blood is on Joe Biden and the Democrats’ hands. They have shown they are willing to trade innocent American lives for votes and seats in the House. Not one Democrat witness during a recent Senate Judiciary Hearing on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would say that only citizens should vote in federal elections, showing that their “compassion and empathy” is just a political tool.
Most immigrants just want to be a part of and contribute to the greatest country in the world, but completely unvetted immigration, like the many illegal border crossings that the Biden Administration is allowing, also attracts violent criminals like Laken Riley’s killer. The border crisis needs to be fixed for the safety of all Americans, and it begins with voting out the people who are more concerned about the words used to describe a murderer than a promising young woman’s life. Her life mattered to us.