Biden says he regrets using term ‘illegal’ to describe Laken Riley murder suspect

Joe Biden said Saturday that he regretted using the term “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the suspected killer of University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

Meanwhile, the Democratic president’s all-but-certain 2024 Republican rival, Donald Trump, blasted Biden’s immigration policies and blamed them for Riley’s death while at a rally attended by her family and friends.

Biden expressed remorse after facing frustration from some in his party for the use of the term to describe people who arrived or are living in the US illegally.

“I shouldn’t have used illegal – it’s undocumented,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart taped in Atlanta, where the president was meeting with small business owners and holding a campaign rally.

Trump, campaigning in Rome, Georgia, at the same time, assailed Biden for the comments.

“Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to loud jeers and boos. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”

The back-and-forth underscored how Riley’s murder has become a flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and a rallying cry for Republicans who have seized on frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border during a record surge of migrants entering the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder.

Trump was joined at his rally by Riley’s parents, her sister and friends and met with them before he took the stage.

In a speech that lasted nearly two hours, Trump hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his State of the Union address this past week.

The former president alleged