by Declan Rooney ‘25

On February 2, Laken Riley, a student at the University of Georgia, was murdered by an illegal immigrant. “She was brutally murdered by one of the millions of illegal border crossers President Biden chose to release into our homeland,” said Alabama Sen. Katie Britt in the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union. “Y’all … as a mom, I can’t quit thinking about this,” Britt told her audience on national television on March 7. “I mean, this could have been my daughter. This could have been yours.”

The problem with Britt’s claims is that the link between Biden’s border policy and higher crime rates is tenuous. Biden, to the frustration of his own base, has been remarkably conservative at the border. Early in his presidency, Biden resisted calls to end policies put in place by Trump at the border, including those regarding separation of children from their detained parents. Biden recently surpassed Trump as the president with the most immigration focused executive-actions in just three years of his presidency. Biden also controversially turned away thousands of Haitians seeking asylum at the border in 2022. Before drawing such conclusions, the GOP should first look at statistics, not towards individual and anecdotal events such as Riley’s murder. They only sow more fear and division into our country by doing so.