When a 22-year-old nursing pupil was discovered useless on a wooded path on the College of Georgia in what’s believed to be the primary murder on campus in practically 30 years, it set off waves of grief and concern that shook the college to its core.
However when a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was charged on Friday with kidnapping and murdering the scholar, Laken Riley, it did one thing else: It remodeled Athens and Clarke County, a neighborhood of about 130,000 folks some 70 miles east of Atlanta, into the most recent flashpoint within the political struggle over American immigration coverage.
In a social media submit on Monday, former President Donald J. Trump referred to as the suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, a “monster,” and blamed President Biden for an “invasion” that’s “killing our citizens.” Earlier within the day, at an occasion on the college, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia decried “an unwillingness by this White House to secure the southern border.”
A 3rd Republican, Consultant Mike Collins, who represents Athens, wrote on social media: “The blood of Laken Riley is on the hands of Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas and the government of Athens-Clarke County,” referring to the unified city-county authorities.
Such statements have struck many liberals as demagogic rhetoric piled atop a horrific crime. In an interview on Sunday, Kelly Girtz, the Democratic mayor of Athens-Clarke County, mentioned that the dialog needs to be targeted on mourning the sufferer, and blaming a person slightly than a bunch.
“This murder was a violent, heinous act,” he mentioned, “and it rests squarely on the shoulders of the perpetrator.”
The comparatively liberal tradition of Athens, its native immigration insurance policies, and the border disaster have mixed with a brutal crime to create a poisonous brew at Georgia’s flagship college, the place pupil politics runs the gamut.
Exterior the scholar heart, Ella Jackson, 19, a freshman from Milton, Ga., mentioned she didn’t really feel unsafe or apprehensive. However she took difficulty with the native authorities’s coverage on undocumented immigrants. “I don’t really think it’s our job to house the illegal immigrants, and especially so close to a college campus.”
In recent times, the town has seen an increase in native left-leaning politicians, Mr. Girtz amongst them, who’ve introduced a brand new focus to questions of social justice and righting what they see as lingering Deep South wrongs. They haven’t been shy about their embrace of undocumented immigrants and a Hispanic neighborhood whose numbers have elevated drastically in and round Athens within the final 30 years.
On the similar time, Athens stays a sort of sacred house for Georgia conservatives. The large college, set in the midst of city, has educated most of the state’s strongest Republicans, together with Governor Kemp, an Athens native. And the college’s successful soccer workforce, in addition to the tailgating and adulation that it engenders, are core Georgia traditions that Mr. Kemp and others conspicuously weave into a conservative tapestry of tradition and coverage.
Mr. Kemp, a former Athens house builder and developer, received his first governor’s race in 2018 with an audacious advert by which he declared, “I bought a giant truck, simply in case I have to spherical up felony illegals and take ‘em home myself.” This month, he pledged to send Georgia National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Mr. Girtz, the mayor, was first elected in 2006 to the commission that governs the unified city-county government. He said that Athens’s extra activist band of politicians and their supporters grew, to some extent, out of the brand new wave and post-punk music scene that famously sprouted in Athens within the early Eighties, giving the world R.E.M. and the B-52s.
On Sunday morning, at a espresso store close to campus, the mayor, in an olive army jacket and a ball cap, dismissed the concept he was chargeable for the killing. He mentioned that Consultant Collins, who accused him of getting blood on his palms, harbored “a kind of cartoon narrative around how the universe operates.”
Together with addressing issues of race and sophistication that had lengthy separated lots of Athens’s Black and white residents, the brand new liberal lawmakers hewed to a defiantly anti-Trump stance on undocumented immigrants, lots of whom got here to Athens to work at poultry vegetation or arrived throughout the constructing growth of the early 2000s.
In 2018, the native sheriff on the time, Ira Edwards, beneath stress from Mr. Girtz and others, ended the observe of holding arrested immigrants in jail for 48-hour durations to present federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers a possibility to select them up for potential deportation.
The following 12 months, Mr. Girtz and the fee handed a decision denouncing white supremacy and declaring that undocumented folks ought to “feel welcome and comfortable” interacting with authorities.
And in 2020, voters elected a liberal district legal professional, Deborah Gonzalez, who pledged to “take into account collateral consequences to undocumented defendants” in making charging choices.
Conservatives had been appalled by all of it — and stay so.
On Monday, State Consultant Houston Gaines, an Athens Republican, famous that Mr. Ibarra, the suspect within the College of Georgia killing, was issued a felony quotation for shoplifting at a Walmart in Athens in October, in line with court docket information. Data present {that a} bench warrant was issued, that means that he very doubtless skipped a court docket date.
There exists “an atmosphere of Athens being a place welcoming to people who, frankly, shouldn’t be in the United States,” Mr. Gaines mentioned.
Mr. Ibarra was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally in September 2022 and was launched shortly with non permanent permission to remain within the nation, the authorities mentioned.
That launch, or parole, was a observe that the Biden administration used when officers had been overwhelmed with excessive numbers of crossings. It ended that observe about six months later.
In August, Mr. Ibarra was arrested in New York Metropolis on costs of kid endangerment and violation of a driver’s license legislation, in line with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He finally moved to Athens and was residing in an condo inside strolling distance of the crime scene.
In 2022, the Republican-led state legislature carried out what Democrats mentioned was an act of retaliation, redrawing Athens’s districts to rid the fee of three of its most liberal members. Ms. Gonzalez, the district legal professional, was a foremost impetus for state lawmakers to create a fee final 12 months with the ability to take away state prosecutors. (That fee is at the moment in operational limbo.)
Mr. Gaines mentioned this week that he and different Republicans would attempt within the coming days to push payments to tighten up insurance policies round undocumented immigrants.
At a trailer park north of city, Jose Tapía, 50, a development employee from Mexico and a authorized U.S. resident, mentioned he anticipated issues to get harder for his undocumented neighbors. “I think there’s going to be more tension,” he mentioned. “I’m sure the police are going to be more strict.”
