Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

JENNY BETH MARTIN: Biden’s Border Policies Have Real World Consequences

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Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, in Athens, Georgia, is dead today, a victim of blunt force trauma to the head.

Her family and friends have shared with the world the kind of person Laken was, and she will be remembered for her joy of life, her desire to help others, her strong Christian faith, her love of Jesus and her loving spirit.

Her alleged murderer is Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela, who wouldn’t have been in our country to commit the crime if it had not been for Joe Biden’s open-borders immigration policy.

That open-borders policy is the result of deliberate choices, made after costs, benefits and other options were considered. And those choices have consequences.

Ibarra was in the country because the Biden administration made a deliberate decision to allow him into the country. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Ibarra was detained by the Border Patrol on September 8, 2022, after entering the country unlawfully near El Paso, Texas.

It is unclear whether he claimed asylum.

Whether he did or not, he entered the country unlawfully. He should have been detained and deported. But the Biden administration — acting through Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his subordinates, implementing a policy Biden and Mayorkas agreed upon at the beginning of the Biden administration three years ago — chose to allow Ibarra to remain in the country.

He was paroled and set free.

That was an abuse of the president’s parole authority. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(d)(5)(A), “The Attorney General may … in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.”

Did Ibarra even “apply for admission to the United States”? Was Ibarra paroled into the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons?

Was his parole into the United States considered a significant public benefit? Or was he paroled like more than a million others have been, simply because the Biden administration wanted to allow him into the country, and found what it thought was a clever loophole?

Whichever it was, Ibarra took advantage of that leniency to travel to New York, where, on Aug. 31, 2023, he was caught driving an unregistered, uninsured car with a five-year-old child inside. He was charged with reckless endangerment of a child and acting in a manner injurious to a child, along with a motor vehicle violation.

He was briefly jailed, then released.

He traveled to Georgia, where, according to court records, he and his brother Diego Ibarra were arrested for stealing $200 worth of goods from a Walmart in Athens. He likely skipped his court date, because there was a warrant out for his arrest as of last week.

Riley, a nursing student, went for a run Thursday morning along a trail in a wooded area near the University of Georgia intramural fields. When she did not return, her roommate notified authorities. Her body was found shortly thereafter.

The following day, Ibarra was charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, hindering a 911 call, and concealing the death of another.

The local District Attorney — Deborah Gonzalez, elected in 2020 on an extremely liberal cashless bail/abandon the death penalty platform — has come under fire as an ineffective prosecutor.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, an Athens native, put her on notice on Monday: Asked that day, after remarks to the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, if he had confidence in the local D.A.’s ability “to bring this case, this suspect, to justice,” Kemp tersely said, “Well, she best do that.”

Later that same day, Gonzalez declared she would not lead the prosecution, but would instead turn those duties over to a new special prosecutor she would appoint, Sheila Ross, who currently works for the Prosecuting Attorneys Council.

Biden’s open-borders policy, enacted at his direction by executive order within days of taking office, has created chaos — not just at the southern border itself, but in every state of the Union.

Even by the federal government’s own figures, Biden’s open-borders policy have resulted in millions of illegal alien “encounters” at the southern border. Not surprisingly, this has led to a massive increase in the number of crimes committed by illegal aliens.

A review of the data showing arrests of criminal noncitizen individuals with criminal convictions, collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, begins to tell the tale – from totals of just 4,219 in fiscal year 2019 and 2,438 in fiscal year 2020, the numbers jump to 10,763 in fiscal year 2021, 12,028 in fiscal year 2022, and 15,267 in fiscal year 2023.

Given that the number of monthly “encounters” (what you or I would more likely call “arrests,” except that “arrests” implies that the person arrested is going to be detained, and the aliens “encountered” are simply let go into the interior of the country) at the southwest border has spiked from 78,414 in January 2021 to 301,983 in December 2023, it’s no surprise that crimes committed by illegal aliens have spiked as well.

What will it take to get Biden to see what his lawless policies have done to our country? How many more will have to die at the hands of the violent criminals he’s allowed to flood into our country?

Laken Riley’s murder demands justice. Joe “Mr. Open Borders” Biden can’t deliver it, because he’s the principal author of the policy that may have made her murder possible. He should sign H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, into law as part of the upcoming spending agreement.

And then, it is going to be up to us, the voters — we, the people — to change the policy by resoundingly voting Biden out of office in November.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.