WASHINGTON — It was what Republicans demanded, but never expected.
President Joe Biden said her name.
“Laken Riley.”
Even before Biden began speaking, the topic of border security was sure to be one of the tensest moments in the State of the Union address.
Biden was confronted as he walked into the House chamber by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hardline Republican, decked out in a red Trump MAGA hat and a T-shirt with the message on it, which also appeared on a button she pressed into his hand. .
“Say her name,” it read, the phrase reminiscent of the language activists used after the deaths of George Floyd and others at the hands of police.
The death of Laken Riley, a nursing student from Georgia, has become a rallying cry for Republicans, a tragedy they say encapsulates the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border amid a record wave of immigrants who enter the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the US illegally has been arrested and charged with murder.
Midway through the speech, Biden started talking about border security and called on Congress to pass legislation to secure the border and modernize the nation’s outdated immigration laws, praising the bipartisan effort that collapsed when his likely Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, opposed that.
Greene interjected, “Say her name!”
The Georgia congresswoman shouted, pointing a finger and thrusting it towards Biden.
And then Biden did just that.
He held up the white button and said, “Laken Riley.”
Biden spoke briefly about her death and referenced his own family’s trauma: His first wife and young daughter died in a car accident in 1972. His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
And then he urged Congress to work together to approve a compromise on border security.
“Finish this bill!” Biden said.
He even called on Trump to stop fighting any border deal.
“We can do it together,” he said.
With immigration becoming a top issue in the presidential election, Republicans are using almost every tool at their disposal — including ousting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — to condemn the president’s handling of the border.
Hours earlier, the House voted to pass the Laken Riley Act, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain unauthorized migrants accused of theft.
Authorities have arrested Jose Ibarra on charges of murder and assault, a Venezuelan man who entered the US illegally and was allowed to stay to continue his immigration case. He has not yet entered a plea to the charges.
Trump has used Riley’s death to condemn Biden’s handling of the border, telling the Crown at an event this month that the president would never say her name.
Biden has also adopted some of Trump’s language at the border, and on Thursday evening he called the man accused of killing Riley an “illegal.”
Greene had handed out the buttons earlier in the day. Biden also looked up at the gallery where many guests were seated, but Riley’s parents were not there.
Rep. Mike Collins, a Georgia Republican, said this week that he had invited Riley’s parents to the State of the Union address, but that they “chose to stay home as they mourned the loss of their daughter.”