The Laken Riley Tragedy

National Review Online

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

 

If millions of immigration-enforcement encounters are a statistic, the murder, by blunt force trauma to the head, of one American young woman is a tragedy.

 

Negligent enforcement policies set by the Biden administration, indulgent “sanctuary” given to lawbreakers by our cities, and abusive appropriation of taxpayer resources to aid aliens in their lawbreaking all likely contributed to the killing of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student. Her death is the result of United States policy enabling a criminally minded man who came here to press a bogus asylum claim.

 

The illegal immigrant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, who was arrested for her killing crossed the border into Texas on September 8, 2022. He was sent to a processing facility but was quickly “paroled” and released, as has become custom. He was chauffeured — at your expense — by bus to New York City. He was arrested in Queens for endangering the welfare of a child, his wife’s son, who had no restraint or helmet as he rode on the back of Ibarra’s moped. Normally when Immigration and Customs Enforcement learns that a removable illegal immigrant is arrested, it requests that local law enforcement keep the person in custody until he can be transferred to ICE and put in deportation proceedings. New York City released Ibarra before his detainer could be issued.

 

Every part of his story testifies to the barratry of the Biden administration and Democrats. Normal visitors and tourists to the United States have their backgrounds checked for criminal activity. But at the border, the Biden administration has incentivized everyone who wishes to come to America, but has no legal right to settle here, to claim asylum. Our lax enforcement encourages so many to come claiming asylum that we overwhelm the court system that adjudicates such claims. This overtopping of the system is then an excuse for “processing” entrants via an asylum officer, most often not a lawyer, and acting not upon the law but policies set by the Department of Homeland Security. Ibarra’s own marriage was confected, according to his estranged wife, to join and thereby strengthen their asylum cases. They were gaming the system. At every turn, Ibarra discovered that law in the United States is not seriously enforced.

 

Some commentators will say that immigrants have a lower crime rate than American citizens, and so in the Ibarra case we are dealing with a statistical outlier here. Even if this were true, it is a non sequitur. The Biden administration has a positive duty to defend our borders and to not incentivize lawbreaking. False asylum seekers often break several laws — not just illegally crossing our borders but working illegally, committing Social Security fraud, or obtaining other false identification documents. The crimes of those who have no right to be here should be counted against the authorities who knowingly enabled them to come and to stay. That starts with the Biden administration and extends to the cities.

 

Ibarra had no right to be in this country. Authorities had ample chances to do what the law of the land requires and bounce him back to Venezuela. They deliberately failed to do so. The Biden administration, through its malicious neglect and positive subversion of our immigration law, has made itself in effect, if not by the letter of the law, an accessory to Laken Riley’s murder.