President Joe Biden said that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of Laken Riley, as his all-but-certain 2024 GOP rival, Donald Trump, blasted the Democrat’s immigration policies and blamed them for her death at a rally attended by the Georgia nursing student’s family and friends. This case has put immigration squarely at the centre of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Biden expressed remorse after facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the U.S. illegally. “I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” he said in an interview. But his use of the word “illegal” drew a sharp backlash from liberal commentators and migrant advocates who say Biden should have used the more politically correct term “undocumented.”
“Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer,” Trump said during a rally in Georgia. “He was illegal and I say he was an illegal alien.” In sharp contrast to Trump, Biden said he would never “demonize” immigrants. But while that expression of regret may have placated some on the left, his opponents on the right said it confirmed their charge that he is soft on migrants.
Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was attacked late last month while on a morning run in a wooded area at the University of Georgia in Athens. The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s murder has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who have seized on frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S-Mexico border during a record surge of migrants entering the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.
Trump, in a speech that lasted, hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week. One fervent Trump supporter, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, surprised Biden as he made his way to the front of the House chamber to deliver his State of the Union message, pressing a button with Riley’s name on it into his hand and telling him, “Say her name.”
Trump, who had made immigration a centrepiece of his campaign, has repeatedly vowed to mount the largest deportation in the nation’s history if he wins.
Biden supports a reform package aimed at tightening border security- a package negotiated at length by members of both parties but ultimately blocked by Republicans who say it contains little that Biden could not have done on his own.
Democrats say there was Republican support for the bill until Trump declared his opposition; they say he was loath to hand his rival a major political victory on a sensitive subject as they both campaign for president.
The bill would have restricted asylum claims, provided for the hiring of more border police, and allowed the president effectively to close the border if more than 5,000 migrants a day attempted to cross unlawfully in a week.
Border police registered a record 302,000 interceptions of migrants coming from Mexico in December, though the number dropped sharply to 176,000 in January, according to official data.
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