On Wednesday, less than a week after it passed the House, the Laken Riley Act was introduced in the Senate. While the bill was sponsored by Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), whose district includes Athens where the 22-year-old nursing student was murdered, the state's two Democratic senators aren't sponsoring their chamber's version. All the sponsors are all Republicans. Further, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), even dismissed the bill as a matter of "smoke and mirrors."
His remarks came during his Tuesday night appearance on MSNBC's "The ReidOut." In typical fashion, host Joy Reid focused the issue of the young woman's death, who was allegedly killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, as "one of the ways Donald Trump and Republicans are hoping to demagogue their way back into, you know, hold onto control... of the House and gain control of the Senate."
"They've been truly demagoguing an issue of a Georgia young woman," Reid continued to accuse, conveniently leaving out mention of Ibarra or his immigration status. "The legislation requires the detention of any migrant who's been accused of burglary or theft. My understanding is that burglary and theft are already illegal," she stupidly pointed out.
Reid's comments are particularly ignorant and serve to only further mislead viewers, as it cannot be stressed enough that at issue is how the sanctuary cities of New York City and Athens both failed to alert the federal government about Ibarra. He was released and thus allowed to re-offend.
Collins had mentioned that the bill "would amend federal law to require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to issue detainers and take custody of illegal aliens who commit theft-related crimes, such as shoplifting, as defined by state and local law."
"The bill directly addresses one of the federal policy issues related to Laken Riley's murder. As is widely reported, Jose Ibarra was cited for shoplifting by the Athens Police Department prior to killing Ms. Riley. If local law enforcement had called ICE, and ICE issued a detainer and picked him up, Laken Riley would be alive," the congressman had also pointed out.
"What does this law add to the current existing law? Is it just a messaging bill? Does it do anything or change anything," Reid went on to ask after her diatribe against Republicans. To add further insult to injury, she thought it necessary to point out: "I will note for our audience that overall crime is down this year across this country. And migrant crime is negligible. Crime by migrants is negligible. What does this law do? Does it do anything?"
While he did begin by saying "my heart goes out to this young woman's family, Laken Riley did not deserve what happened to her," Warnock quickly rushed into claiming: "To answer your question succinctly, this is smoke and mirrors by people who are not serious."
The senator then went on to try to sell the failed border bill, just as so many of his fellow Democrats, including the White House, continue to do.
"We had a bipartisan piece of legislation in front of us. It had a lot of provisions, some provisions that some folks on my side didn't like, but the only way to get comprehensive immigration reform, the only way to address the current crisis on the border in divided government is on a bipartisan basis. And so rather than demagoguing this tragic death by this young woman, they ought to get serious. And let's pass some bipartisan legislation and deal with the crisis at the border," Warnock continued, parroting Reid's unhelpful phrasing and talking points.
Sen. @ReverendWarnock on his opposition to the Laken Riley Act: “This is smoke and mirrors by people who are not serious.” pic.twitter.com/K84j3WaS61
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 13, 2024
Warnock has been asked about Laken Riley before. Although CNN's Jake Tapper had asked the senator much more thought-provoking questions on Sunday, wondering about our immigration policies being to blame, as he pointed out that the Rileys are Warnock's constituents, the Georgia Democrat similarly stuck to blaming Republicans for not passing a bad bill.
Collins still has hope that Warnock might come together to support the Rileys, though. "I understand some of my colleagues' initial reaction to the bill when first introduced as we see way too many 'messaging bills.’ However, the Laken Riley Act passed the House with overwhelming support, including almost a fifth of the Democratic Caucus. Warnock has shown he can work in a bipartisan manner on solutions Georgians care about, and I hope he will help us get this passed in the Senate. Ms. Laken's family and many other Georgians want to see Congress working to get this done," the congressman said in an office for Townhall.
The claims about crime from Reid is also a narrative we've seen from fellow Democrats before as well, including from the White House and President Joe Biden himself. As Katie covered in recent weeks, though, "the most violent places in the country don't properly report their crime statistics to the FBI -- the federal agency used by Biden to claim things are fine. Further, leftist prosecutors regularly downgrade felonies to misdemeanors, if they prosecute criminals at all, skewing the data."
Columns from Ann Coulter and Betsy McCaughey have also addressed the problems of dismissing the crime rates of illegal immigrants, especially given that such people were not lawfully in the country to begin with. At the very least in Riley's case, the alleged crimes of Ibarra very much matter in this case, and not in a "negligible" way.