Mollie Tibbetts Murder: Family Members Push Back on 'Racist, False Narrative'
A cousin of Mollie Tibbets, the 20-year-old Iowa college student whose murder garnered national attention, has pushed back on Republican lawmakers’ attempts to politicize her death after Cristhian Rivera, an undocumented 24-year-old Mexican immigrant, was arrested and charged with Tibbets’ murder.
“For 34 days, investigators searched for 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts,” the White House official Twitter account posted last week. “Yesterday, an illegal alien, now charged with first-degree murder, led police to the cornfield where her body was found. The Tibbetts family has been permanently separated. They are not alone.” The tweet included a video of people whose family members had also been killed by undocumented immigrants.
U.S. authorities claim that Rivera provided fake employment documents to his job. In a recent court filing, per the Washington Post, Rivera’s lawyer claimed he was legally allowed to work in the U.S.
After Tibbetts’ body was found, President Trump told a West Virginia crowd, “You heard about today with the illegal alien coming in, very sadly, from Mexico and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman. Should’ve never happened. Illegally in our country. We’ve had a huge impact, but the laws are so bad. The immigration laws are such a disgrace, we’re getting them changed, but we have to get more Republicans. We have to get ’em.”
“We are angry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community, and we will do all we can to bring justice to Mollie’s killer,” Iowa’s Republican governor Kim Reynolds said in a statement.
Tibbetts’ cousin Sandi Tibbetts Murphy rejected their argument in a Facebook post, writing, “You do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative now that she is no longer with us. We hereby reclaim our Mollie.”
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https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/mollie-tibbetts-murder-family-racist-false-narrative-716255/
