Donald Trump blames Kamala Harris for student’s murder

He attacked the vice-president at a weekend rally, claiming she had let a ‘savage monster’ into the US

Donald Trump was speaking in Georgia on Saturday, days after Kamala Harris held her own event in the swing state. Picture: Christian Monterrosa/AFP

Donald Trump sharpened his attacks on Kamala Harris at the weekend and claimed that the vice-president was directly responsible for the murder of a nursing student whose alleged killer had entered the US illegally.

Harris has served as the “border tsar” and “let in the savage monster who killed Laken Riley”, Trump claimed, referring to a student who was attacked in February while jogging around the campus of the University of Georgia.

A Venezuelan man named Jose Ibarra, who crossed the border illegally in 2022, has been charged with her murder. Republicans including the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, have claimed that Riley’s death was a result of a failure by the Biden administration to secure the southern border.

Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student whose death in February became a catalyst in the partisan fight over immigration and crime. Picture: Facebook

Trump went further on Saturday, saying: “Kamala is responsible for the death as though she were watching it herself.” In a speech laced with dark rhetoric about immigration, he said that “social security will buckle and collapse, the suburbs will be overrun with violent crime and savage foreign gangs”.

Harris did not serve as Biden’s border tsar but was tasked with leading a diplomatic effort focused on three Central American countries where poverty and disorder had fuelled waves of migration north to the United States.

The White House has said that she oversaw multibillion-dollar aid and investment programmes in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and falling numbers of migrants from the three nations, though any effects of the initiative have been eclipsed by huge rises in migration from other countries including Venezuela.

Laken Riley's parents Jason Riley (C) and Allyson Philips attend Donald Trump's campaign rally at the Forum River Center in March. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP

Seven million migrants have been arrested crossing the border illegally since Biden took office, a record number that has made immigration a key issue in the presidential campaign.

Biden, at his state of the union speech in March, blamed Republicans for blocking a bipartisan immigration bill meant to address the problem.

Harris’s campaign team responded to Trump’s rally with a statement by Geoff Duncan, a former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, who said that the speech revealed “a particularly unhinged, angry version of the same Donald Trump that Georgia rejected in 2020”.

The vice-president, who secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for the White House last week, is expected to announce her running-mate today (Monday), or in the run-up to a rally in Pennsylvania tomorrow (Tuesday) evening that will kickstart a tour through six swing states.

Supporters for Donald Trump hold images of Laken Riley before he speaks at a "Get Out the Vote" rally in Rome, Georgia, on March 9. Picture: Elijah Nouvelage / AFP

The decision to start the tour in Pennsylvania, which she must win to secure the White House in November, has fuelled speculation that she will choose the state’s governor, Josh Shapiro, who had cancelled several planned appearances at fundraising events in Long Island over the weekend.

Shapiro had a 55 per cent approval rating in a recent poll - including 63 per cent among swing voters - his popularity boosted by the extraordinarily rapid repair of a collapsed portion of a giant highway that was expected to take months but was completed within the space of a fortnight. He was expected to meet Harris at the weekend, but so were five other potential running-mates.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro speaks during a campaign rally for Vice President Kamala Harris on July 29. Picture: Hannah Beier/Getty Images/AFP

Three other state governors, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Tim Walz of Minnesota, were said to be sitting for one final job interview. So was the Arizona senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who represents another key swing state, and Pete Buttigieg, the transport secretary whose 2020 run for the presidency made him a national figure.

Though Buttigieg would have no particular sway in a swing state, he has been touted as a highly effective communicator who regularly appears before conservative-leaning audiences on Fox News, defending the president and attacking Trump.

The Times