When a 22-year-old nursing student was found dead on a wooded trail at the University of Georgia, in what is believed to be the first homicide on campus in nearly 30 years, it unleashed waves of grief and fear that shocked many. University.
But when a 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant was charged Friday with kidnapping and killing student Laken Riley, something else happened: It transformed Athens and Clarke County, a community of about 130,000 located about 70 miles east of Atlanta, in the new epicenter of the political struggle over United States immigration laws.
In a social media post on Monday, former President Donald Trump said the suspect, José Antonio Ibarra, was a “monster” and blamed President Joe Biden for an “invasion” that is “killing our citizens.” That same day, at an event at the university, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp denounced “the lack of will of this White House to secure the southern border.”
A third Republican, Athens Rep. Mike Collins, posted on social media: “Laken Riley’s blood is on the hands of Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas and the Athens-Clarke County government,” referring to the unified government. of the city and county.
Many liberals consider these statements to be part of demagogic rhetoric coupled with a horrific crime. In an interview Sunday, Kelly Girtz, the Democratic mayor of Athens-Clarke County, said the conversation should focus on grieving the victim and blaming an individual rather than a group.
“This murder was a violent and heinous act,” he said, “and it falls squarely on the perpetrator.”
Athens’ relatively liberal culture, local immigration policies, and border crisis combine with brutal crime to create a toxic mix at Georgia’s top university, where student politics is highly diverse.
Outside the student center, Ella Jackson, 19, a freshman from Milton, Georgia, said she didn’t feel unsafe or worried. But she took issue with the local government’s policy on undocumented migrants living in the United States. “Actually, I don’t think it’s our job to shelter illegal migrants, especially so close to a university campus.”
In recent years, local left-wing politicians have become more prominent in the city of Athens, including Girtz, who have given a new perspective to social justice issues and corrected what they see as persistent ills of the Deep South. These politicians have not hesitated to accept undocumented migrants in the country and the Hispanic community, whose numbers have increased drastically in Athens and its surrounding areas in the last 30 years.
At the same time, Athens remains a kind of sacred space for Georgian conservatives. The massive university, located in the center of the city, has trained many of the state’s most powerful Republicans, including Kemp, who is originally from Athens. And the university’s successful football team, as well as the partying and adulation it generates, are core Georgia traditions that Kemp and others conspicuously weave into a conservative melting pot of culture and politics.
Kemp, a former Athens home builder and developer, first became governor in 2018 with a bold announcement saying: “I have a big truck, just in case I have to catch illegal criminals and take them to their home.” home”. This month, he pledged to send Georgia National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Girtz was first elected mayor in 2006 to the commission that governs the unified city and county government. According to him, Athens’ most activist group of politicians and their supporters emerged, to some extent, from the new wave and post-punk music scene that became famous in Athens in the early 1980s and from which groups such as REM and The B-52s.
On Sunday morning, at a coffee shop near the university campus, the mayor, sporting an olive green military jacket and baseball cap, dismissed the idea that he was responsible for the incident. He said Rep. Collins, who accused him of having blood on his hands, had “a kind of cartoonish narrative about the workings of the universe.”
In addition to addressing issues of race and class that have separated many of Athens’ black and white residents, the new liberal lawmakers clung to a defiant anti-Trump stance on undocumented immigrants, many of whom came here to work in poultry plants or during the construction boom of the early 2000s.
In 2018, the local sheriff at the time, Ira Edwards, under pressure from Girtz and others, ended the practice of holding arrested immigrants in jail for 48-hour periods to give federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials . the opportunity to pick them up for possible deportation.
In 2020, voters elected a liberal district attorney, Deborah González, who promised to “take into account the collateral consequences for undocumented defendants” when making the decision to charge them.
Conservatives were horrified by all this, and that feeling still persists.
On Monday, Houston Gaines, R-Athens, said Ibarra, the suspect in the University of Georgia murder, was issued a criminal summons for shoplifting from an Athens Walmart in October, according to court records. Documents show a warrant has been issued for his arrest, meaning he will likely not appear in court.
There is “an atmosphere that Athens is being a place that accepts people who, to be honest, shouldn’t be in the United States,” Gaines said.
Ibarra was arrested by the United States Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally in September 2022 and was immediately released with temporary permission to remain in the country, according to authorities.
That release, or permit, was a practice the Biden administration implemented when officials were overwhelmed by the large number of people crossing the border. The government ended this practice six months later.
In August, Ibarra was arrested in New York on charges of child endangerment and violating driver’s license law, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He ended up moving to Athens and lived in an apartment located a short distance from the crime scene.
Gaines said this week that in the coming days, along with other Republicans, he would try to push bills to toughen policies around undocumented migrants.
At a trailer park north of the city, José Tapía, 50, a Mexican who works in construction and is a legal resident of the United States, said he anticipated things would get more difficult for his undocumented neighbors. “I think there’s going to be more tension,” he said. “I’m sure the police will be stricter.”
Richard Fausset is an Atlanta-based correspondent. He writes about politics, culture, race, poverty, and the penal system of the American South. He previously worked for the Los Angeles Times, where he was a correspondent in Mexico City. More by Richard Fausset