Arrest of Migrant Changes Horrific Crime to Political Flashpoint

When a 22-year-old nursing student was found dead on a wooded trail at the University of Georgia in what’s believed to be the first homicide on campus in nearly 30 years, it set off waves of grief and fear that shook the university to its core.

But when a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was charged on Friday with kidnapping and murdering the student, Laken Riley, it did something else: It transformed Athens and Clarke County, a community of about 130,000 people some 70 miles east of Atlanta, into the latest flashpoint in the political fight over American immigration policy.

In a social media post on Monday, former President Donald J. Trump called the suspect, Jose Antonio Ibarra, a “monster,” and blamed President Biden for an “invasion” that is “killing our citizens.” Earlier in the day, at an event at the university, Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia decried “an unwillingness by this White House to secure the southern border.”

A third Republican, Representative Mike Collins, who represents Athens, wrote on social media: “The blood of Laken Riley is on the hands of Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas and the government of Athens-Clarke County,” referring to the unified city-county government.

Such statements have struck many liberals as demagogic rhetoric piled atop a horrific crime. In an interview on Sunday, Kelly Girtz, the Democratic mayor of Athens-Clarke County, said that the conversation should be focused on mourning the victim, and blaming an individual rather than a group.

“This murder was a violent, heinous act,” he said, “and it rests squarely on the shoulders of the perpetrator.”

The relatively liberal culture of Athens, its local immigration policies, and the border crisis have combined with a brutal crime to create a toxic brew at Georgia’s flagship university, where student politics runs the gamut.

In recent years, the city of Athens has seen a rise in local left-leaning politicians, Mr. Girtz among them, who have brought a new focus to questions of social justice and righting what they see as lingering Deep South wrongs. They have not been shy about their embrace of undocumented immigrants and a Hispanic community whose numbers have increased drastically in and around Athens in the last 30 years.

At the same time, Athens remains a kind of sacred space for Georgia conservatives. The enormous university, set in the middle of town, has educated many of Georgia’s most powerful Republicans, including Governor Kemp, an Athens native. And the school’s winning football team, as well as the tailgating and adulation that it engenders, are core Georgia traditions that Mr. Kemp and others conspicuously weave into a conservative tapestry of culture and policy.

Mr. Kemp, a former Athens home builder and developer, won his first governor’s race in 2018 with an audacious ad in which he declared, “I got a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ‘em home myself.” This month, he pledged to send Georgia National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.

Mr. Kemp’s remarks on Monday echoed a letter that he sent to the White House on Friday, citing statistics on illegal border crossings and drug seizures at the southern border.

Mr. Girtz. was first elected in 2006 to the commission that governs the unified city-county government. He said that Athens’s more activist band of politicians and their supporters grew, to some extent, out of the new wave and post-punk music scene that famously sprouted in Athens in the early 1980s, giving the world R.E.M. and the B-52s.

“People drawn to the magnetic creative energy of Athens matured into being political thinkers,” Mr. Girtz said, “and much of that political thought is left of center.”

Along with addressing matters of race and class that had long separated many of Athens’s Black and white residents, the new liberal lawmakers hewed to a defiantly anti-Trump stance on undocumented immigrants, many of whom came to Athens to work at poultry plants or arrived during the building boom of the early 2000s.

In 2018, the local sheriff at the time, Ira Edwards, under pressure from Mr. Girtz and others, ended the practice of holding arrested immigrants in jail for 48-hour periods to give federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials an opportunity to pick them up for potential deportation.

The next year, Mr. Girtz and the commission passed a resolution denouncing white supremacy and declaring that undocumented people should “feel welcome and comfortable” interacting with government.

And in 2020, voters elected a liberal district attorney, Deborah Gonzalez, who pledged to “take into account collateral consequences to undocumented defendants” in making charging decisions.

Conservatives were appalled by all of it — and remain so.

On Monday, State Representative Houston Gaines, an Athens Republican, noted that Mr. Ibarra, the suspect in the University of Georgia killing, was issued a criminal citation for shoplifting at a Walmart in Athens in October, according to court records. Records show that a bench warrant was issued, meaning that he very likely skipped a court date.

There exists “an atmosphere of Athens being a place welcoming to people who, frankly, shouldn’t be in the United States,” Mr. Gaines said.

In 2022, the Republican-led state legislature carried out what Democrats said was an act of retaliation, redrawing Athens’s districts to rid the commission of three of its most liberal members. Ms. Gonzalez, the district attorney, was a main impetus for state lawmakers to create a commission last year with the power to remove state prosecutors. (That commission is currently in operational limbo.)

Mr. Gaines said this week that he and other Republicans would try in the coming days to push bills to tighten up policies around undocumented immigrants.

For Mr. Girtz, the debate over public policy is just part of the story. On Sunday morning, at a coffee shop near campus, the mayor, in an olive military jacket and a ball cap, dismissed the idea that he was responsible for the killing. He said that Representative Collins, who accused him of having blood on his hands, harbored “a kind of cartoon narrative around how the universe operates.”

Mr. Girtz spoke of the deep sense of shock and mourning over the death of Ms. Riley. He also mentioned the 1964 Athens murder of a Black World War II veteran, Lemuel Penn, at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

Asked if the conservative rhetoric, triggered by the death of a young white woman, could fuel retributive violence against immigrants in town, Mr. Girtz said: “We do live in a time when sometimes ugly and simplistic rhetoric fuels other terrible actions, so, yes.”

Athens’s undocumented population is living with a mix of fear and frustration. “The truly guilty ones are the Republicans and the federal government,” said an auto mechanic named Noe who declined to give his full name for fear of retribution, “because every time election times comes, they treat us like a costal de boxeo — a punching bag.”

He added: “They beat on us, and treat us like we are guilty of every bad act.”

At a trailer park north of town, Jose Tapía, 50, a construction worker from Mexico and a legal U.S. resident, said he expected things to get tougher for his undocumented neighbors. “I think there’s going to be more tension,” he said. “I’m sure the police are going to be more strict.”

On campus on Monday morning, classes had resumed, and the place bustled with students. Flowers had been laid at the base of the school arch, the iconic campus entrance. The heads of two Hispanic student groups wrote a letter urging students “to reject hate in all its forms.”

Outside the student center, Ella Jackson, 19, a freshman from Milton, Ga., said she did not feel unsafe or worried. But she took issue with the local government’s policy on undocumented immigrants. “I don’t really think it’s our job to house the illegal immigrants, and especially so close to a college campus,” she said, adding, “I don’t really think it does anything to benefit us in any way.”

Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon contributed reporting from Athens, Ga.