After weeks of searching, twenty-year-old Mollie Tibbetts' body was found by police on Tuesday. Authorities have since arrested Christhian Bahena Rivera for first degree murder. It’s believed that Rivera has lived in Poweshiek County for more than four years as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. Now, Rivera’s immigration status has become a topic of debate on social media and in the news cycle.
The coverage of the murder of the Iowa College student and Rivera's immigration status has mainly caused conservatives to voice their disdain for immigration. USA Today reported that Trump called the US' immigration policy “a disgrace” and asked at a rally on Tuesday about whether or not his supporters had heard about the “illegal alien” from Mexico. “You saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman,” Trump said. “Should have never happened.”
Prominent conservative voice Candace Owens took to twitter to write, “Leftists boycotted, screamed, and cried when illegal immigrants were temporarily separated from their parents. What will they do for Mollie Tibbetts? What did they do for Kate Steinle? They will NEVER see their parents again.”
Some of Tibbetts' family have taken to their own social media to ask people to stop using Rivera as an excuse to group together immigrants as a whole.
“Please remember, evil comes in EVERY color,” Tibbetts' aunt Billie Jo Calderwood wrote Tuesday night on Facebook. “Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”
A girl named Sam Lucas, who claims to be Tibbetts' second cousin, also responded. “hey i;m a member of mollie’s family and we are not so fucking small-minded that we generalize a whole population based on some bad individuals," she tweeted. "now stop being a fucking snake and using my cousins death as political propaganda. take her name out of your mouth.”
I think that we can all learn from this that it is incredibly important to remember that we can’t characterize an entire group of people because of one person’s actions.
