Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., told Newsmax on Monday that, in allowing illegal aliens to flow unchecked into the United States, the Biden administration failed Laken Hope Riley, a 22-year-old University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered over the weekend by Venezuelan national Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26.
"It's just a failure," Collins said during an appearance on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It's a failure on the local level; it's a failure on the national level with the Biden administration ... The Biden administration has got the authority and the ability right now — they could shut this down in the next 30 minutes if they wanted to."
He added: "They're going to continue to let it happen. This is part of their agenda. But what we need to continue to do is press."
Collins said he's called on the local government to resign in the wake of Riley's tragic death and said he's certain that parents who send their children to the University of Georgia don't know that Athens is listed as a sanctuary city.
"They don't know this is a sanctuary city and as a father of a 26-year-old daughter, man, this is just gut-wrenching," he said. "We don't allow this to happen in our country, and yet it is happening right in front of our faces. They say, Oh, it's a technicality, we're not technically a sanctuary city, but when you walk like a duck, and you quack like a duck, you're a duck, and that's what they've been doing is allowing these people to flow in there."
The Peach State lawmaker said Georgia has the death penalty "so we can settle up with this fellow [Ibarra]," and said it doesn't matter if other countries won't take their citizens who illegally crossed into the U.S. back.
"Wherever we picked them up from, that's where we need to drop them back off at," he said. "They came through the southern border, send them back through the southern border. Mexico is just as responsible for this as anybody. They could stop this.
"They could help us stop this, and they have in the past. We just don't have an administration that is willing to step up and be strong enough in some areas and in some areas, like this one, hey they're welcoming."
Collins also said Americans need to remember Riley's death in November and return former President Donald Trump to the White House so he can fix the border crisis.
"The American people are really waking up out there," he said. "We need to get moved on past this primary. We need to be running a general election so that we can get Trump back in the White House and we can take our country back.
"He was exactly right when he stood at the bottom of that escalator and said that there are thugs, murderers, human traffickers coming across that southern border, and this is, unfortunately, a sad example and proof of what he was saying."
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Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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