Democratic lawmakers have spoken out about their displeasure with President Joe Biden calling Laken Riley’s alleged killer an “illegal” during his State of the Union address on Thursday night.
The president addressed the incident that left the 22-year-old University of Georgia student dead after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called on Biden to “say her name” during his speech, to which he responded by stating that she was “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal” and later seemed to flub her name, calling her “Lincoln Riley.”
Biden’s use of the term illegal has resulted in backlash from multiple lawmakers within the Democrat Party, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) arguing on CNN that the president “should have said ‘undocumented.'”
Benny Johnson, a Florida media personality, said of Pelosi’s comments, “Nancy Pelosi is more concerned that Joe Biden called the criminal alien that murdered Laken Riley an ‘illegal’ than she is about Laken Riley’s death.”
Multiple other Democratic lawmakers have voiced their displeasure as well, with Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stating on social media that “[n]o human is illegal.”
“We have to be very intentional in the language we use to describe human beings. Careless & inflammatory language only creates fear & animosity of vulnerable groups and aligns with MAGA extremist playbooks. We can do better by centering our shared humanity,” he added in the post.
“There was a lot of good in President Biden’s speech tonight, but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong,” wrote Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) in a post on X.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Riley was allegedly killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an unlawful migrant from Venezuela. Ibarra was paroled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2022 pending an asylum hearing. The following year, Ibarra was taken into custody in New York on charges of endangering a child under the age of 17 as well as motor vehicle license violations. He was released from jail before Immigration and Customs Enforcement could order his detention.
Riley’s murder followed record-high levels of unlawful migration into the United States from the southern border.
