By MARSHA MERCER
We shouldn’t even know her
name.
Mollie Tibbetts should
be one of millions of promising young women back in college this month, far
from the media glare.
But hers is a household
name and her picture as familiar as a film star’s -- for the most awful of reasons.
On July 18, Mollie went
out for a run in Brooklyn, Iowa, population 1,400, and vanished.
She was 20 years old, 5-feet-2
and 120 pounds, a psychology major at the University of Iowa. Friends said she had
no enemies.
For more than a month,
the FBI, state and local police searched intensively. A reward of nearly $400,000
was offered. Finally, security camera videos given to authorities captured a
black Chevy Malibu driving up and down the street while Mollie jogged.
Her body was found
Tuesday in a cornfield outside Brooklyn. A farmworker named Cristhian Rivera,
24, confessed to kidnapping her and led authorities to the body, which was
covered with cornstalks, police said. Charged with kidnapping and first degree
murder, he is being held in jail on $5 million cash bond.
Something else about
Rivera led most of the news coverage: He’s a Mexican in the country illegally.
President Donald Trump,
who seizes every opportunity to link undocumented immigrants and criminal
behavior, said the crime “should’ve never happened.” On that, we all can agree.
Predictably, Trump
blamed “the illegal alien” from Mexico and called U.S. immigration laws “such a
disgrace.”
He urged voters to
elect more Republicans who will help him tighten immigration laws and stop the
flow of criminals illegally entering the country. Democrats want “open borders,”
he said. It’s a familiar Trump refrain – and simply untrue.
Many Democrats oppose Trump’s
border wall as ineffective, but they favor bipartisan legislation that would
strengthen border security with technology and collaboration between local law enforcement
and Border Patrol as well as increase the efficiency of immigration courts.
No matter, the monstrous
killing was turned into a political talking point.
“As Iowans, we are
heartbroken, and we are angry. 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 Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican
in a tough re-election contest, said in a statement.
Rivera’s employers at
Yarrabee Farms say they thought he was in the country legally and were shocked
by his involvement.
“All of us are saddened by the tragic death of Mollie and the
realization that one of our coworkers was involved,” said Dane Lang, a farm
co-owner, who has received death threats and threats to burn down his barn.
When Rivera started
work at the dairy operation four years ago, he presented an out-of-state ID and
Social Security number which checked out through the Social Security
Administration. It’s now known the ID was not in his real name.
The farm is partly
owned by Craig Lang, a prominent Republican who ran unsuccessfully in the GOP
primary in June for Iowa secretary of agriculture.
He is a former president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and of the Iowa
Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s public universities.
As sad and
heartbreaking as the tragedy is, the emphasis on Rivera’s immigration status is
unfortunate, said Mark Stringer, a Unitarian Universalist minister who is executive
director of the ACLU of Iowa.
“It’s important to remind ourselves
that, sadly, people of all races and levels of citizenship commit crimes,” he
said in a statement.
Trump often claims illegal immigrants
commit more crime than native-born Americans, but no nationwide statistics back him up. Many
studies of smaller samples find undocumented immigrants have lower rates of crime than native-born
Americans.
Immigration policy
analyst Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute analyzed 2015 Texas
data and found the rate of convictions per 100,000 illegal immigrants was 16
percent lower than that of native-born Americans. He suggests that trend likely
holds nationwide.
More than a century of
social science research shows immigrants are less likely to commit serious
crimes or be incarcerated than the native-born, says Walter Ewing of the
American Immigration Council, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrants.
Research won’t stop Trump
or other politicians from using fear of crime and immigrants on the campaign
trail. But we all should listen to Mollie Tibbetts’ aunt Billie Jo Calderwood,
who wrote on Facebook:
“Please remember, Evil
comes in EVERY color.”
©2018 Marsha Mercer.
All rights reserved.
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