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Katie Porter Says ‘One Instance’ Of Murder ‘Shouldn’t Shape’ US Immigration Policy After Nursing Student Killed

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Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of California downplayed the need for policy changes after the murder of nursing student Laken Riley during a Monday CNN appearance.

University of Georgia police arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, and charged him with murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley. Porter, who is running for Senate, tried to deflect attention from Ibarra’s immigration status.

“Well, I think what a horrible tragedy likes, like this happens, I think whenever we‘re dealing with violent crime, there is a sense of outrage, of sadness and of loss, but I think the important thing to focus on is any one instance shouldn‘t shape our overall immigration policy, which has so many different facets, including economic choices about what workers to allow and how to create prosperity in America” Porter told CNN host Erin Burnett. “So the situation is tragic and it‘s a loss and it‘s important to acknowledge that, but also to recognize all the other how all the other parts of immigration policy fit together.”

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Ibarra was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border and released by the Border Patrol, according to NewsNation. Porter claimed that a comprehensive approach to immigration was necessary.

“I think we‘ve seen under Title 42 and some other policies that efforts to simply quote, close the border is not really solving the longer-term problem, which is that we have not put the resources or the policies at the border so we have all different kinds of chaos and challenges from not having enough immigration judges to not investing in technology that can help a screen for fentanyl, which I voted for, but we need to do more on recognizing that we haven‘t kept our promise to dreamers,” Porter claimed. “All of these things come together to create the kinds of chaotic immigration policies we see.”

United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported more than 6.6 million encounters with illegal immigrants since the start of fiscal year 2021, including over 2.2 million in fiscal year 2022.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia blasted the Biden administration over Riley’s death, saying the murder proved “every state is a border state” during a Sunday morning Fox News appearance.