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4 Dec 2024 21:34
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  •   Home > News > International

    Laken Riley's murder became a MAGA rallying cry. Now it's a backdrop to Donald Trump's mass deportation plans

    A young American nursing student was attacked and killed by an undocumented immigrant during her morning jog. Her name was made into a campaign cry for Donald Trump's mass deportation policy.


    The circumstances of Laken Riley's death are both shocking and depressingly familiar.

    A young woman going about her life, in this case jogging in broad daylight on a university campus, is overpowered and murdered by a male attacker apparently intent on raping her.

    An autopsy would later indicate the 22-year-old nursing student died from repeated blows to the head and asphyxiation. 

    It's every woman's worst nightmare.

    And what does it say about the pervasive fear of violence against women that, within half an hour of trying to reach her daughter, Riley's mother appeared to be panicking?

    A chilling timeline

    It's early on February 22 when Laken Riley texts her mum.

    "Good morning, about to go for a run if you're free to talk," she writes at 8.55am.

    The two were in the habit of chatting when Riley was out pounding the trails. 

    Riley's mother doesn't immediately answer the text, or a follow-up call at 9:03am.

    Around that time, CCTV captures Riley jogging along a paved walkway on a university campus in Athens, Georgia.

    She passes by several people out walking. 

    Around 9:06am she's seen veering left into fields. 

    Just minutes later, she's attacked. 

    At 9:11am, the SOS function on her phone is activated, but the emergency dispatcher can't discern anyone on the line. 

    Riley's mother, meanwhile, is trying to contact her daughter.

    "You're making me nervous, not answering when you're out running," she texts at 9:58am. "Are you OK?"

    Riley wasn't OK at 9:58am. 

    Data retrieved from her phone indicated her heart had stopped beating exactly half an hour earlier. 

    When Riley didn't return from her run, her roommates reported her missing.

    At 12:38pm, her body was found by a police officer searching a wooded area near the jogging trail.

    "Ma'am, ma'am", the officer, breathing heavily, can be heard saying in bodycam footage shown in court.

    "I need EMS immediately. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. She's down, she's not breathing!"

    The physical evidence suggests Riley endured a protracted struggle with her attacker. 

    The man who would later be sentenced for her murder had multiple scratch marks on his arms when apprehended by police the next day. 

    His DNA was found under Riley's fingernails. 

    A Republican rallying cry

    The timeline of Riley's murder was established in court proceedings that were broadcast, in part, on live TV. 

    The media attention was not just a result of the senseless, brutal murder of a young woman in a place she should have felt safe. It was also a result of who did it.

    The man now sentenced over the killing is an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, 26-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra.

    Ibarra entered the US illegally in September 2022 near El Paso, Texas.

    He was detained by immigration authorities but allowed to go free as his case was processed.

    Ibarra headed for New York before moving to Georgia, where his brother was living. 

    Ibarra's travel from New York to Georgia was paid for under a process known as re-ticketing. It saw the state, which at the time was dealing with a huge influx of migrants, fork out to move them elsewhere.

    When Ibarra killed Riley early this year, the presidential campaign was picking up pace.  

    Georgia is a swing state which Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2020, and Republicans were hopeful of taking it back (they did).

    They campaigned heavily on the issue of illegal immigration, arguing the Biden administration had failed to control the southern border. 

    Illegal immigrants, they argued, were taking jobs, receiving taxpayer funded benefits and committing crimes. 

    There's no evidence that illegal immigrants are committing violent crimes at higher rates than the rest of the population, but the killing of Riley seemed tailor-made for this narrative.

    The student's death soon became a MAGA rallying cry.

    Two weeks after her death, Majorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia and fierce Trump loyalist, goaded Biden into saying Riley's name during his State of the Union address.

    The president did say her name, but managed to mangle it, calling her Lincoln, not Laken.

    Biden also referred to the man who killed her as "an illegal", raising the ire of the progressive wing of his party. 

    The botched moment would later seem like a bad omen for the Democrats' handling of the issue of illegal migration during the campaign. 

    Political advertising

    Laken Riley's name, and those of other women and girls allegedly killed by illegal immigrants, featured prominently in Donald Trump's campaign.

    Relatives of the victims appeared with him at events, and in campaign ads. They included the mother of 12-year-old Joceyln Nungaray, whose body was dumped in a Texas creek, allegedly by two men who'd entered the US illegally. 

    At a time when many Americans feel they're doing it tough, resentment and fear of immigrants proved relatively easy to stoke.

    The Democrats were seen by many voters as having done too little too late to address what they latterly accepted was a crisis at the border.

    When I interviewed a young woman in Georgia in September, she cited fear of an illegal immigrant harming any children she might have as a reason she'd decided, for the first time in her life, to vote for Trump.

    Coincidentally, we spoke the day after a high school shooting in Georgia.

    Not too far from where we met, a 14-year-old is alleged to have shot and killed two students and two teachers.

    It felt telling that, for this woman, the fear of an illegal immigrant murdering her future children was more prescient than the threat of them being impacted by the scourge of gun violence.

    Republicans were not alone in using emotive stories about women's deaths in their campaign.

    Democrats highlighted the cases of several women who died, or almost did, as a result of abortion restrictions implemented after the overturning of Roe v Wade.

    Reproductive rights had proved to be a winning issue for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

    But while the majority of state initiatives to protect abortion have succeeded, the issue did not galvanise voters in the presidential election to nearly the extent the Democrats had hoped.

    Life sentence

    Jose Ibarra waived his right to a trial by jury.

    The defendant, who sat impassively through four days of evidence, listening on headphones via an interpreter, also chose not to take the stand in his defence. 

    He was convicted on 10 charges, including murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape.

    Donald Trump was following proceedings from afar.

    "JUSTICE FOR LAKEN RILEY!", he posted from Florida after Ibarra was found guilty.

    "We love you, Laken, and our hearts will always be with you. It is time to secure our border, and remove these criminals and thugs from our country, so nothing like this can happen again!"

    Taylor Greene was also quick on the draw, saying Trump's election win amounted to a "decisive mandate" to carry out his plan to carry out mass deportations.

    "January 20th cannot come soon enough … If you're in this country illegally: PACK. YOUR. BAGS."

    Before Ibarra was sentenced to life without parole, the court was shown harrowing bodycam footage of the moment her family was told she'd been found. 

    Her mother, Allyson Phillips, could often be heard sobbing from the gallery as her daughter's last moments were relived in court. 

    In her impact statement, she called Ibarra a "monster", who she said had robbed the family of their hopes and dreams for Riley.

    "There is no end to the pain, suffering and loss that we have experienced or will continue to endure".


    ABC




    © 2024 ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved

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