Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Georgia on Saturday, where he met with the family of Laken Riley, a nursing student alleged to have been killed by an immigrant released into the country by President Joe Biden.
On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper hosted Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and asked him, “The Rileys are your constituents. Is it not true that there were policy failures that led to this tragic murder?”
Warnock failed to name any specific “policy failures,” but he did say, “The border must be secured. The border must be secured. We know this. There’s agreement about that on both sides, which is why we had a bipartisan piece of legislation before us just a matter of weeks ago.”
Except, the problem is that nothing in the Senate border bill negotiated by the White House and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) would have prevented Riley’s murder. In fact, the legislation wasn’t even designed to stop it.
The suspect in Laken Riley’s death, Jose Ibarra, was charged with illegally crossing the southern border with his wife and her child near El Paso, Texas, on Sep. 8, 2022. If the Biden-Lankford bill were law at that time, Ibarra and his family would have been processed through the legislation’s new “noncustodial removal” process.
Once placed in “noncustodial removal,” the Biden-Lankford bill mandates (yes, mandates) the release of all immigrants placed into the program. Ibarra and his family would then have been enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s existing Alternatives to Detention program.
This is the same program that Jose Ibarra’s brother Diego was enrolled in after he was charged with illegally crossing the southern border on April 30, 2022, also near El Paso, Texas. Diego Ibarra was held in custody by Border Patrol until May 11, 2022, when he was fitted with an ankle bracelet and enrolled in the ATD program. He was then released on May 12.
Just two weeks after his release, ICE listed Diego Ibarra as an “absconder” from the ATD program because of GPS abnormalities. This most likely means he cut off his ankle bracelet, which was eventually found by police in Colorado.
After ICE listed Diego as an “absconder” from the ATD program, did ICE make any effort to track him down, arrest him, and deport him?
No. It is Biden policy not to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants whose only crime is being in the country illegally. This is the written policy of the Biden administration, as signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in his September 2021 memo. This Mayorkas memo is an executive action taken by the Biden administration. It is not dictated by law, and, in fact, current law requires Mayorkas to deport all immigrants currently in the country without authorization, which would have definitely included Diego Ibarra.
Nothing in the Biden-Lankford memo repudiates the Mayorkas memo.
In fact, not only does the Mayorkas memo say that no effort will be made to deport immigrants whose only crime is not being in the country legally, but the memo also makes it clear that only those immigrants accused of “serious criminal conduct” will be subject to immigration enforcement.
As the nondetainment of both Diego and Jose Ibarra make clear, driving under the influence, theft, and child endangerment are all not “serious” enough crimes to merit deportation under the Biden regime.
And again, nothing in the Biden-Lankford border bill would have changed these enforcement priorities, which are, again, set completely by the discretion of Biden himself.
In fact, the House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation last week that would require ICE to detain and deport all immigrants charged with theft. While it is encouraging that 37 Democrats joined every Republican in voting for the bill, the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 170, voted against it.
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In other words, the overwhelming majority of Democrats, and the Biden administration, want criminal immigrants walking free. That is their policy reference. They want the Diego and Jose Ibarras of the world to be able to steal, to get drunk and drive, and to endanger minors without any threat of deportation.
That Jose and Diego Ibarra were walking around committing crimes isn’t a Democratic Party policy failure. It is a policy choice.