Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said the murder of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley was “100 percent preventable” if it weren’t for the “radical open borders agenda” of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Jose Ibarra, a 26-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela, was arrested and charged last week for his alleged murder of Riley (pictured above), who died from blunt-force trauma to her head.
Ibarra was processed and released after crossing illegally into the U.S. on September 8, 2022, and was previously arrested and charged in New York City with child endangerment and a motor vehicle license violation last year.
Cortes said Riley’s murder at the hands of the illegal alien should make voters demand action over the border.
“These kinds of tragedies should awaken everybody out there. You know, even folks who may not love Donald Trump, may not agree with the America First agenda…There are consequences to having an open border. We have no idea who these millions and millions of illegals are, who are trespassing into our country,” Cortes said on Monday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy. “In this case – and there are other cases like it, it’s not the only one, it’s the most recent of the most horrific – we allow a monster to walk into the United States, to saunter into our country, to break and enter into the United States, and the fallout, unfortunately, for this young lady and for all of her friends and family, is just intense.”
“It’s something that I hope will rouse the voters of Georgia and voters all over this country to demand action and to demand law and order over our border and to demand that we stop allowing an open door to this country through which many dangerous people are able to enter,” Cortes added. “I think sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a tragedy that is this horrific to wake up a lot of folks…who aren’t particularly involved in or invested in politics in current affairs.”
Cortes noted the rise in Chinese nationals, known terrorists, and overall widely unknown backgrounds of individuals crossing illegally into the U.S., saying there’s “literally an open door” into the United States for “dangerous people who have very ill intentions for the United States.”
“We’re letting in thousands and thousands of unvetted Chinese, mostly young men, into the United States. Now, I think, without doubt, a certain percentage, if not a large percentage of those folks, are coming at the direction and behest of the Chinese Communist Party, who realizes there’s literally an open door to send anyone we want into the United States,” Cortes said. “And there is increasing evidence specifically regarding Venezuela that that country and that government, which of course is completely antagonistic to American interests, is in fact emptying its jails, sending its problem people to the United States, which again, from their perspective, only makes sense from a government that hates its own people and hates the United States. Of course, they want to export their problems to this country.”
Getting back to Riley’s case, Cortes said he’s optimistic that the horrendous murder of the young woman is also “going to compel a lot of folks out there” to become active and vote Biden out of office.
“We cannot have another Laken Riley. We cannot allow it on our watch as parents, as citizens – let’s protect our precious young adults, let’s protect our women. This issue has to be a fulcrum moment where people wake up,” Cortes said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Laken Riley” by Laken Riley.
It was preventable. The democrats, specifically the OBiden Administration has blood on their hands.