‘We have no idea if that would have changed anything, but he’s here illegally,’ Jason Riley said. ‘He might not have been here had we had secure borders.’

By Jack Davis | The Western Journal

Jason Riley knows that the mention of his daughter’s name conjures up many things in the polarized United States of 2024 – the upcoming election, the porous border, crime running rampant – but for him, it conjures up one thing: The face of the daughter he will never see again in this life.

“I wake up every day thinking that I can call her, and I can’t,” the father of Laken Riley said in an interview on “Today,” according to NBC.

Laken Riley was the Georgia nursing school student murdered in February. A Venezuelan man who crossed the border illegally is suspected of killing her.

Jason Riley and Allyson Phillips, Laken’s mother, are divorced.

Allyson Phillips has called President Joe Biden “pathetic” for botching her daughter’s name at his State of the Union speech, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.

She attended a March 9 rally for former President Donald Trump in Rome, Georgia, along with other members of Laken Riley’s family, according to The Associated Press.

Although less overt politically, Jason Riley lined up with his ex-wife in support of Trump, noting that he recognizes his daughter’s murder has become part of the intense debate over the cost of Biden’s de facto open border policies.

“Laken has been a rallying cry for secure borders and for the illegal immigration policies of this current administration, but there’s many women we don’t get to hear about,” he said.

“I understand them wanting to come here for a better life, but when you have gang members and people who can commit violent crimes, especially against women, I think we can stop some of that,” he said, speaking about illegal immigrants.

While recognizing the intensity of the debate triggered by Laken’s death, Jason Riley does not want the world to forget his daughter.

“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” Jason Riley said.

“It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel,” he said.

“She was only 22. She had a lot of life left to give to the world,” he said. “If everybody could live like Laken, it would make the world a better place.”

He said that to him, the gaping wound her death left is personal.

“I wish I would have been there to protect her. I wish it would have been me,” he said.

“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country, and it’s incited a lot of people,” he said.

That has left the grieving family a target, he said.

“There’s people on both sides that have lashed out at our families,” he said.

And for all he wants the world of angry political debate to go away, he realizes that with the man charged in her death having entered the country illegally, others are asking the question he asks himself.

“We have no idea if that would have changed anything, but he’s here illegally,” Jason Riley said, according to Fox News. “That he might not have been here had we had secure borders.” ##