How the right wing politicised the murder of Georgia student Laken Riley

“Say Her Name,” read the t-shirt Georgia firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene wore to President Joe Biden’sState of the Union address on Thursday night.

Pins featuring Laken Riley’s name and face were also emblazoned across her bright red blazer, which matched her “Make America Great Again” cap.

The MAGA Republican handed the pins out to anyone she could – including to the president himself – and made sure to get herself noticed as she heckled throughout his speech, calling on him to do as her shirt said: “Say her name!”

It was a deliberate outfit choice – and one that took the tragic murder of the Georgia student who went for a run and politicised it to push her brand of politics.

Last month, Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was attacked and killed while going for a run. She died of blunt force trauma to the head after her killer allegedly used an object to strike her, “disfiguring her skull,” before “dragging” her to a “secluded area”.

Police say her murder came at the hands of murder suspect Jose Antonio Ibarra, the man who was charged on 23 February with malice murder, felony murder, false imprisonment and kidnapping in the case.

Mr Ibarra is not a US citizen and is an undocumented migrant.

The 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant was arrested for “unlawfully entering” the country in September 2022, according to the ICE. He has since been accused of shoplifting in Georgia and was allegedly arrested in New York. However, the NYPD told The Independent it had no record of such an arrest.

And so, in the wake of the attack, Republicans, including former presidentDonald Trump, have used Mr Ibarra’s status to exemplify the ongoing issue at the southern border and touted Riley’s brtual killing as a way to bolster their