Bill Clinton said that if the border had been 'properly vetted' Laken Riley wouldn't have died

Former Democratic President Bill Clinton said on Monday that if the people crossing the southern border had been properly vetted, Georgia nursing student Laken Riley would still be alive. 

“You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you?” Clinton said during a campaign event for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. “They made an ad about a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened.”

Earlier this year an illegal alien from Venezuela, Jose Ibarra, was charged with the murder of Laken Riley.

Ibarra had illegally entered the U.S. in El Paso, Texas in September 2022, according to the New York Post. He was released after being in custody for about a day, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement sources. He went to New York City, where he was arrested for endangering a child, charged with a felony and released.

From there he went to Athens, Georgia, where his brother lived. He was then charged with green card fraud after he presented a fake permanent residency card to police officers, and he has also been linked to the Venezuelan gang El Tren de Aragua.

Clinton added that Americans weren't having enough babies, stating, "we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work – there wouldn’t be a problem," according to The Hill.

He went on to take a shot at former President Donald Trump for tanking a bipartisan border bill that he said would have helped the crisis at the southern border. 

The Trump campaign seized on the remark about Riley, also according to The Hill. They sent out an email statement titled “Bill Clinton Blames Kamala Harris For Laken Riley’s Death.”

“The Trump campaign disingenuously took President Clinton’s comments out of context,” said Angel Ureña, a spokesman for Clinton, in an email to The Hill.

Many Republicans voted against the bipartisan border bill because, they argued, it wouldn't stop illegal immigration and rather would keep enabling it.

The bipartisan border act would mandate expulsions only when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants enter the U.S. daily on average for a week. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., was slammed for the legislation by fellow Republicans earlier this year as he was one of the negotiators of the bill.