I’m Not Done With Athens-Clarke County

By Erick-Woods Erickson

The recent murder of Laken Riley has seemingly opened the floodgates of stories regarding violent crime at the hands of illegal immigrants. Consider these three recent headlines:

In Colorado, an Illegal immigrant who has been deported four times killed a teenage boy and his mother while driving drunk. – Denver Post

In Louisiana, an illegal immigrant raped a 14-year-old girl at knifepoint and stabbed another man before being arrested by police. – Fox 8

In Maryland, an illegal immigrant has been arrested in connection to the murder of a 2-year-old boy. – Fox 5

As a growing number of these stories continue to come out after Riley’s death, the Mayor of Athens lectured residents at a press conference that they should not conflate illegal immigration with crime. Mayor Kelly Girtz went on to claim that his 18 years in public service has overlapped four presidential administrations and each one of them failed to fix the immigration issue. (4:50 mark of video above)

Ignoring his gratuitous statements about crime and illegal immigration while a young woman’s body is still warm, Mayor Girtz is gladly abdicating the role of local government to protect its citizens when the federal government fails.

After all, Athens-Clarke County in 2019 bucked statewide law and deemed itself a sanctuary city stating “all people, including those without documentation, feel welcome and comfortable interacting with local law enforcement, their local government, and all service provided as such… Undocumented neighbors, especially those with Latinx heritage, face daily fears and threats from individuals and institutions such as ICE.”

The local District Attorney made the problem inextricably worse when elected by announcing she would take into account “collateral consequences to undocumented defendants” before determining whether to press criminal charges. (2:15 mark of video above)

But the cherry on top of the Athens-Clarke County local government debacle is a commissioner by the name of Jesse Houle. Jesse is a spectacularly unaccomplished person who lives in a throuple and prefers to be referenced using they/them pronouns. Ironically, Jesse has “abolished prison” in his Twitter bio.

Just yesterday Jesse tweeted, “None of us know all of the facts yet regarding Ms. Riley’s tragic death. Assuming the alleged perpetrator is the murderer (and I certainly hope that police have arrested the correct person), he is an individual and not a representative of everyone with whom he shares an identity.”

In short, a 22-year-old college student is dead at the hands of an illegal immigrant while the DA “weighs the collateral consequences” and the mayor and commissioners lecture Americans about conflating illegal immigration with crime. It should be no surprise to anyone that a city that sought to protect illegal immigrants to this degree is run by unaccomplished idealogues.