A 26-year-old man was charged in the death of an Augusta University College of Nursing student on the campus of the University of Georgia. According to Athens police chief Jeff Clark, the man does not have an extensive criminal record, but he is not a U.S. citizen nor a student at UGA.

Within a day of the death of Laken Riley, the Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, blamed the death on immigrants. He spoke to the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce. He said, “The death is the result of failed policies on the Federal level and an unwillingness of this White House to secure the southern border.” Kemp said he sent a letter to the President demanding more information on illegal immigrants, where they are and if they have broken any of our laws.

Protestors disrupted a news conference as the major of Athens defended the city’s policies to limit cooperation with federal authorities enforcing enforcement actions. Some of the protestors want the mayor to resign.

Meanwhile, the Georgia legislature has ramped up the rheteric that immigrants cause crime in communities, and that police should be on the outlook for possible illegal immigrants. The Georgia House advanced a bill that targets immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission. House Bill 1105 would penalize sheriffs who don’t coordinate with federal immigration authorities. Police officers are supposed to communicate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when someone is found to have entered the country illegally.

At the University of Georgia, where Laken Riley was killed by a man who had entered the country illegally, Latino students face hostility after the arrest. According to a report by Kaitlyn Schwanemann and Nicole Chavez, CNN, “Riley’s brutal killing has sparked several online threats against migrants and Latino students at the University of Georgia. CNN has not independently verified these posts, but screenshots of threatening messages have circulated among the school’s tight-knit Latino community, creating a climate of fear.” According to UGA Racial Demographics data, 2,241 undergraduates were Latino in 2022 (about 7% of the total undergraduates of 27,888). There were no Hispanic professors among the faculty in the same year.

The killing of anyone is a crime that should be investigated and the perpetrator (s) brought to justice. In this case, a man has been arrested and has been charged with murder.

But because the man they arrested was an undocumented Venezuelan migrant, the Governor, Republican legislators, and a handful of protesters in Athens have turned the incident into a vendetta—a feud in which politicians want to seek vengeance against an entire group of people because of the murder by one person. The Georgia government is laying the blame on the whole Latino community, not only in Athens but throughout the state.

The Case for Open Borders

I am reading John Washington’s book, The Case for Open Borders. Washington is a translator and staff writer at Arizona Luminaria. Arizona Luminaria is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to genuinely local news and community-centered journalism. The Case for Open Borders is a powerful analysis of the concept of borders (around the world), and one that we should pay careful attention to. I agree with the introduction to the book which is as follows:

Because of restrictive borders, human beings suffer and die. Closed borders force migrants seeking safety and dignity to journey across seas, trudge through deserts, and clamber over barbed wire. In the last five years alone, at least 60,000 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross a border. As we deny, cast out, and crack down, we have stripped borders of their creative potential — as lines of contact, catalyst, and blend — turning our thresholds into barricades.

Brilliant and provocative, The Case for Open Borders deflates the mythology of national security through border lockdowns by revisiting their historical origins; it counters the conspiracies of immigration’s economic consequences; it urgently considers the challenges of climate change beyond the boundaries of narrow national identities. 

The Case for Open Borders. John Washington, Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2023.

For the United States and most other countries, an open border is a familiar idea. I’ll explore his ideas in the days ahead. In the meantime,

Read his book.