ATLANTA — Among the many people honored during President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night were the mother and sister of slain Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
Riley was killed in Feb. 2024 on the University of Georgia campus where she went jogging. Police arrested and charged Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who was in the country illegally. A judge sentenced Ibarra to life in prison with parole.
Riley’s death became a rallying cry for Trump’s White House campaign. Allyson and Lauren Phillips, Riley’s mother and sister, sat in the gallery on Tuesday night.
“Laken was stolen from us by a savage illegal alien gang member who was arrested while trespassing across Biden’s open southern border and then set loose into the United States under the Heartless policies of that failed administration,” Trump said during his speech. “I told Laken’s grieving parents that we would ensure their daughter would not have died in vain.”
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The Laken Riley Act was the first piece of legislation Trump signed into law once taking office again in January.
The Laken Riley Act allows the deportation of migrants charged with crimes like burglary, theft, assaulting law enforcement or other crimes that result in serious injury or death.
Critics of the law say that the focus on immigration in the context of Riley’s murder may overshadow other factors contributing to crime and public safety.
A prosecutor in Indiana has already used the law to deport an undocumented immigrant in response to a deadly car accident.
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