Days after the 2024 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden apologized for calling an illegal immigrant suspected of killing a young woman “illegal” during his speech.
On March 6, the president was pressured to say the name of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, who was kidnapped and murdered last month. Her suspected killer is an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.
After pronouncing her name as “Lincoln” Riley, Biden described her as “an innocent woman who was killed by an illegal.” He expressed condolences to her parents and urged Republicans in Congress to approve a bipartisan bill that he claims would implement border security practices.
The bill was promptly stalled by Republicans, who Biden claimed in his State of the Union address were being influenced by former president Donald Trump. The leading GOP candidate is widely favored among conservatives for his strict border proposals and warned that the bipartisan bill would not crack down on illegal immigration as much as necessary.
Biden’s use of the word “illegal” to describe Riley’s suspected murderer was criticized by far-left Democrats like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who wrote on social media that “no human being is illegal.”
On Sunday, March 10, the president spoke with Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC, who asked Biden about his word choice during the State of the Union. The host referenced how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had been “heckling” the president to say the young woman’s name, at which point Biden interrupted him.
Preempting the question, the president said he should have called the murder suspect an “undocumented person” instead of “illegal.”
In the same shameful clip where Joe Biden apologized for calling Laken Riley's killer an "illegal," he also said something despicable that is getting overlooked:
"Look, they built the country."
This is so brazenly incorrect it's difficult to put into words. NO. Illegals did not… pic.twitter.com/8aUr5rjuNh
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 11, 2024
The commander-in-chief added that his correction puts him at odds with the way in which Trump talks about illegal immigrants. Biden said that he refuses to “treat any of these people with disrespect.”
He also claimed that illegal immigrants are “the reason our economy is growing” and that they “built the country.” Despite his rejection of Trump’s dedication to securing the border from illegal immigrants, Biden did admit that the border needs to be under “control” and with a “more orderly flow.”
During his State of the Union address, the president also acknowledged the out of hand immigration crisis by claiming that the bipartisan bill stalled in the legislature would provide him emergency authority to “temporarily shut down the border” at times when the “number of migrants at the border is overwhelming” — which he already has the authority to do as president. However, the bill actually allows up to 5,000 illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. per day before the government has the option to “shut down the border.”
Biden claims his border bill, which would have allowed 5,000 illegals into the Country a day, was the toughest set of border security reforms ever.
Biden has let in 7.8 million illegals since he took over pic.twitter.com/RVERhQkEfA
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) March 8, 2024
