U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) penned an op-ed in The American Conservative following the murder of a 22-year-old nursing student, Laken Riley, by an illegal alien. In the piece, Coach Tuberville calls Joe Biden’s visit to the border on Thursday a “photo op” and demands that Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas secure the border before more innocent Americans are murdered.
Read excerpts below or the full piece here.
“Last Wednesday morning, Laken Riley went out for a jog at a lake on the campus of the University of Georgia.
“She never came home. The police found her body brutally beaten and disposed of in the woods. The autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma to the head. The University of Georgia police said it was a ‘crime of opportunity.’ In other words, this was essentially random violence and could have been anyone’s daughter. Laken Riley was just 22 years old. She studied at the University of Georgia until last spring, when she had enrolled in a nearby nursing school. She was a daughter, a friend, a sorority sister, and a student with a promising future.
“This tragedy became national news when police arrested and charged Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela, with Laken Riley’s murder. Ibarra illegally crossed the southern border into El Paso in September 2022, was arrested and then released by Customs and Border Protection, and subsequently put on a bus to New York.
“Laken’s murder was far from Ibarra’s first offense. In September 2023, Ibarra was arrested in New York City and charged with ‘acting in a manner to injure a child under 17’ and for driving without a license. Specifically, Ibarra was accused of endangering a 5-year-old child, and yet was released with minimal consequences. Because New York is a sanctuary city, illegal aliens who commit crimes are not turned over to ICE when their jail time is up.
“So, my question is: What are Georgia’s Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff doing to secure the border? The Senate is supposed to be considering the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas this week. Are Georgia’s senators going to vote to remove Secretary Mayorkas or let Laken Riley’s murder be in vain?
“If Laken Riley were my daughter, Secretary Mayorkas would have to go into hiding. I would never let him forget her name or that his inaction led to her death. We cannot possibly understand what the Riley family is going through right now. But for the open-borders-at-all-costs crowd, she’s just collateral damage. Laken Riley is just another sacrifice on the altar of woke ideology.”
