The arrest of an illegal immigrant for the abduction and murder of beloved Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts has made her case a lightning rod in the immigration debate as campaigns for the midterm elections enter their final months.
President Trump mentioned the case at a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday night and slammed the nation’s immigration laws as “a disgrace” — hours after the announcement that Cristhian Rivera, 24, had allegedly confessed to the murder.
“You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly, from Mexico and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman,” Trump told the crowd. “Should’ve never happened. Illegally in our country. We’ve had a huge impact, the laws are so bad. The immigration laws are such a disgrace.”
Trump said that in order to get immigration laws changed, “We have to get more Republicans. We have to get ’em.”
Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds blasted the “broken” immigration system as the reason why Rivera had been living near Brooklyn, Iowa, for the last four to seven years.
“As Iowans we are heartbroken and we are angry,” she said. “We are angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community, and we will do all we can to bring justice to Mollie’s killer.”
Iowa Sen.s Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst echoed those sentiments in a joint statement, saying that “too many Iowans have been lost at the hands of criminals who broke our immigration laws. We cannot allow these tragedies to continue.”
Iowa court records revealed that Rivera had no prior criminal history, and it is unclear if he’s even been subject to prior deportation hearings. His Facebook page said he was from Guayabillo, a community of fewer than 500 people in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
For the last four years, he’d worked at Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by a prominent Iowa Republican family. In a statement, the farm said he’d been an “employee in good standing” and had been vetted as legal to work in the US through a government system.
Vice President Mike Pence, who met with Mollie’s father, Rob Tibbetts, last week, simply said he was “heartbroken” for the 20-year-old girl’s family, and praying for them.
“Now justice will be served. We will never forget Mollie Tibbetts,” he tweeted.
Investigators zeroed in on Rivera thanks to surveillance video and charged him with first-degree murder in the death of Tibbetts, whose disappearance on July 18 set off a massive search. He is being held at the Montezuma Sheriff’s Office on $1 million cash-only bond.