The murder of Augusta University student Laken Riley has been tragic for the country and the state of Georgia. Her horrifying death has prompted the state’s House of Representatives to pass a bill that would enforce illegal alien crime reporting. 

Riley was found dead while out for a run on the University of Georgia campus on February 22, which is near the Augusta University’s College of Nursing, where she studied. She was allegedly killed by José Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela. 

Prior to the tragic death of Riley, lawmakers had already introduced House Bill 1105, the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act of 2024. This legislation aims to address how to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future and was brought forward for discussion in the wake of the incident.

The Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act of 2024 would penalize jail officials who fail to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the presence of an inmate who is in the country illegally. While Georgia Code § 42-4-14 currently requires jail officials to report information, such as “immigration status, offenses, and home countries of persons who are confined under the authority of the Department of Corrections,” to ICE, it is currently not enforced. 

This bill was first in the House’s hopper on January 31, and it passed on February 29, seven days after Riley was murdered. Rep. Jesse Petrea (R-Savannah), who is the bill’s sponsor, told The Daily Signal that the bill was drafted last year, and it was heard twice before her death. 

While the bill passed in a 97-74 vote Republicans faced criticism from Democrats for politicizing the issue.

Democratic state Rep. Pedro Marin of Duluth said, “It is easy and tempting during an election cycle to target minorities and immigrants in order to score political points.” 

However, Rep. Houston Gaines, who represents Athens, where the incident took place said, “Fixing policy in the face of a tragedy to ensure it never happens again is not politics. It’s doing the right thing to ensure something like this never occurs again.” 

Petrea told The Daily Signal that in an informal poll by the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association (GSA) last year, 19 sheriffs said that they do not report illegal aliens to ICE. In a more recent poll GSA’s executive director, Terry Norris told The Daily Signal that 111 sheriffs out of 159 said they report illegal aliens to ICE, and 48 sheriffs did not respond to it. 

In 2019, it was found that there were 339,000 illegal aliens living in the state of Georgia, according to Migration Policy. Several years earlier in 2017, ICE conducted operations in Georgia, as well as in North and South Carolinas, where nearly 200 illegal aliens nationals were arrested. 

According to the ICE website 190 of those arrested had prior criminal convictions in addition to their illegal alien status. Several of these individuals arrested included Mexican nationals who are wanted in their home country “on charges of homicide and attempted homicide,” cocaine distribution charges, and another had sexual contact with a child. 

Immigration also became the center of President Joe Biden’s and former President Trump’s campaign stops in Georgia, which included Biden saying in an MSNBC interview that he “shouldn’t have used ‘illegal’” and should have said “undocumented” during his State of the Union address on March 7 when he referred to Riley’s murderer. 

Biden even received backlash from his own party over the use of the word “illegal.”

“The rhetoric President Biden used tonight was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere,” Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro posted on X. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said, “It was an unfortunate choice of words, but I think he could easily correct it.”

The Democratic Party’s response could indicate progressives are concerned about not offending illegal aliens instead of working to bolster safe immigration practices. 

“He was an illegal immigrant,” Trump said during his rally in Rome. “He shouldn’t have been in our country, and he NEVER would have been under the Trump policy!”

For Georgia voters, among other swing states, immigration and protecting the southern border are seen as key issues, according to a poll by Bloomberg and Morning Consult. Even as early as 2008, the conservative organization, Federation for Immigration Reform warned about the increase of illegal aliens in the state. 

Now that the state House has passed the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act of 2024, it will be kicked to the state Senate and if passed, to Gov. Brian Kemp for signature.