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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, I would like to start by thanking Senator Budd for leading this very important issue to the Senate floor.

We rise today to honor and pay our respects to the late Laken Riley and her family and to mourn with her family.

Today, we call on this Chamber to come together to ensure this never happens again.

Laken Hope Riley. Laken Hope Riley was a beautiful young woman in the prime of her life. She was brutally murdered in broad daylight while jogging on the University of Georgia's campus.

Her alleged murderer, a Venezuelan illegal alien, was one of 2 million people paroled by Joe Biden--one of 2 million. Ironically, he was welcomed here on United States soil by this President and his egregious open border policies.

He was stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2022 when he crossed into Texas illegally, but because of the Biden administration's unlawful mass parole of illegal aliens, he was permitted into our country. From Texas, he moved to New York, where he was arrested by the New York Police Department last year for acting in a manner to injure a child and for a motor vehicle violation. But he was quickly released and never turned over to ICE for deportation. Instead, he was released by police before a detainer could ever be issued by DHS, and he was allowed to roam freely.

Then he journeyed on to Athens, GA. And now we understand that the alleged assailant was a member of a violent Venezuelan gang.

How can we ever identify who those people are when 10,000 people are crossing our border every day? How can the Border Patrol possibly vet these people in a proper manner?

Just like so many other unvetted migrants living in the country right now, this man was handed the American dream--the American dream that Laken Riley should be living right now.

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