Another day, another bombardment of hate from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). The GOP member of Congress has used the tragedy of a young nursing student’s murder to call for stricter border controls, as the primary suspect was an immigrant.
Laken Riley’s body was found late last week, and authorities quickly named Venezuelan citizen Jose Antonio Ibarra as the main suspect. Ibarra had no ties to Riley, and no history of violent crime. He has allegedly been in the States for 18 months and was processed by border control.
As per the U.S. Border Patrol, or CBP, there were 29 murders or homicides attributed to non-American citizens on American soil in 2023. Axios estimates there were around 18,600 murders last year in the States. This means that roughly only 0.15% of all murders committed in the United States were by those who, like Ibarra, are non-citizens, which is a vanishingly small percentage.
According to nonpartisan think tank the Pew Research Center, approximately 14% of people living in the U.S. aren’t citizens, and in 2016, they also claimed that around 3.3% of the total population were undocumented, with this number likely to have risen in recent years. So, despite being a large chunk of the population, immigrants are actually much less likely to commit these kinds of crimes than the average American.
If Greene wanted to turn her vitriol onto people who are more likely to commit violence against women, or murder in general, there is plenty of research that could point her in the right direction. The Bureau of Justice claims that around three quarters of female murder victims were killed by those known to them, and women were five times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than men.
Closer to home for the congresswoman from Georgia, center-left think tank Third Way has compiled statistics on unlawful killings, and discovered that murder rates were roughly 12% higher in red states, much like Greene’s home state of Georgia. Perhaps it’s not the immigrants who need to have restrictions placed on them to combat murder rates.
These are all facts that Greene is clearly avoiding in her gross attempt to use a horrifying murder for political gain. But hey, at least she finally had the honesty to lay some of the blame at Republican feet, mentioning that the Georgia is very much conservative so lawmakers in the state deserve some portion of blame. She did of course get a jibe about Biden in, but in the context of her usual musings, this was relatively tame when it came to criticizing the current president. She didn’t even mention Hunter Biden, which, for her, is something to actually be celebrated.
If the Republican Party’s hateful rhetoric against migration was coming from a place of genuine concern for their constituents, you could at least paint them as misguided but ultimately devoted policy makers. However, the fact that conservatives in government recently scuttled the opportunity to increase funding for border security via bipartisan legislation because they didn’t want the Democrats to have any wins shows that they care more about soundbites than policy.
Greene hasn’t had the best few weeks, with her lord and savior Donald Trump in the dock for a number of offenses, and Republicans losing big in special elections. The outspoken congresswoman was also allegedly planning to not seek reelection as she felt she was a shoe-in as the vice presidential pick for the former Apprentice host, but Trump didn’t even mention her when asked about it at a recent Fox townhall.
If she did choose to drop out, there would be plenty who would support that decision, especially in the aftermath of her years of callousness and shameless opportunism.
Greene could also yet be pushed out of office thanks to her prominent role in the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection at the Capitol. However, we wouldn’t hold our breath on that, given the way the American judicial system has let prominent Republicans who’ve previously committed treason off scott-free.
The best hope for a Greene-free political landscape doesn’t lie with her MAGA heavy constituency finally doing the right thing, but instead Trump once again losing big in 2024 and his acolytes throwing an almighty strop (but hopefully not a treasonous one, this time). If enough people get out to vote, that could very well be a reality.
