House GOP Ignores Data, Passes Anti-Immigrant Bill After UGA Murder

The Republican-led House on Thursday passed a bill requiring law enforcement to detain migrants who commit petty crime. The bill was named after Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was slain on a running trail last month, and whose chief murder suspect is an undocumented immigrant.

The move is Republicans’ latest attempt to turn Riley’s murder into an immigration flashpoint. The 22-year-old college senior was killed in broad daylight while jogging on the University of Georgia’s campus, and Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant, is charged with her murder.

The bill targets migrants who commit “burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting,” for which Ibarra was issued a citation months before Riley’s murder. Speaker Mike Johnson said the bill was in honor of all those who have “been victimized by those whom the Biden administration has released into our country.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.