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The killing of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, has become a flashpoint in the debate over immigration policy. But the politicization of her death has angered her father, Jason Riley, who said that his family has become a target.
“I feel like she’s being used, somewhat, politically,” he told NBC's "TODAY" show in an interview that aired Monday. “It makes me angry. She was much better than that. She should be raised up for the person that she is."
A student at Augusta University, Riley was reported missing after she did not return from a run in late February. Her body was found near a lake, and authorities identified Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant with prior criminal charges, as the prime suspect. He has since been charged with murder, and his attorneys have requested a jury trial.
The identity of the suspect has propelled Riley's murder into the national spotlight. At President Joe Biden's State of the Union address earlier this month, he engaged in an exchange with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia about Riley.
Jason Riley said his daughter's death has "started a storm in our country" and "incited a lot of people." The partisan nature of the debate over immigration policy has led to "people on both sides that have lashed out" at his family, he said.
Ibarra, a Venezuelan citizen, entered the U.S. illegally in 2022, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Last year, he was arrested in New York City after driving a scooter without a license with a child who was not wearing a helmet, The New York Times reported, and he and his brother were issued citations after being accused of shoplifting in Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Jason Riley said he supported presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but he wished his daughter's death was "not so political." When asked if a change in immigration policy would have made a difference to his daughter, he said: "We both have no idea if that would have changed anything, but he's here illegally — that he might not have been here had we had secure borders."