A Year Late, Laken Riley Finally Gets The Honor She Deserved

Laken Riley’s family had to wait a year for it, but the 22-year-old nursing student who was brutally murdered by an illegal alien in February 2024 finally received the presidential recognition she deserved in President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress.

“America will never, ever forget our beautiful Laken Hope Riley,” Trump told her mother Allyson and sister Lauren, who were in the chamber as guests of the first family. 

The president remembered Riley as “the best in her class, admired by everybody,” and spoke at length about the senseless killing in which the “beautiful, young angel” was “stolen from us by a savage illegal alien gang member.”

Riley was killed by Jose Ibarra, an alien who entered the United States illegally in 2022 but was let go by former President Joe Biden’s Border Patrol. Despite being charged in New York six months prior to Riley’s murder for “reckless endangerment of a child,” Ibarra was flown down to Georgia on a free flight thanks to the Biden administration.

On Feb. 22, 2024, he followed Riley on her daytime jog at the University of Georgia, tried to rape her, and murdered her when she tried to fight back.

It was a case that shocked the country, and Americans hoped their president would have the humility to apologize to Riley’s family for the death of their daughter, even if he refused to admit his role in it. Two weeks after her killing, in his final State of the Union address, Biden failed to mention her until he was prompted by a cry from Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to “say her name!”

In a reluctant, unscripted mumble, Biden managed to botch her name, saying “Lincoln Riley” was “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.” He couldn’t offer condolences to her parents without immediately making his own family’s tragedy the center of attention. And afterward, he apologized for the offense of calling her killer an “illegal.”

Now, a year after that humiliating insult, Laken Riley’s family finally got to hear a president properly honor their beloved daughter and sister in an address to the country. They heard the crime — and the criminal — that caused her death condemned with moral clarity, instead of shrouded with excuses and apologies. Instead of suffering the sting of hearing a clueless president misstate Laken’s name, they watched the country come together for a few minutes to honor her.

“Last year, I told Laken’s grieving parents that we would ensure their daughter would not have died in vain,” Trump said in his address. He mentioned the Laken Riley Act, the first law he signed in his second term, which requires authorities to detain illegal aliens accused of violent crimes.

By giving her memory proper recognition, after Biden’s shameful failure last year, Trump righted another wrong. It’s too bad Democrats in Congress couldn’t bring themselves to stand for it.