A 24-year-old Mexican man is charged with the murder of a 20-year-old American woman in Brooklyn, Iowa. The headline in the Seattle Times: “Authorities: Iowa student killed by Mexican in US illegally.” Washington Post: “Man charged with killing Mollie Tibbetts is an undocumented immigrant, authorities say.” Fox News: “Mollie Tibbetts murder suspect, illegal immigrant Cristhian Rivera.” On Tuesday, August 21, the suspect (Cristhian Bahena Rivera), who was unknown to the police until the truck he drove appeared on footage from the security cameras of a home not far from where the victim (Mollie Tibbetts) was last seen a month ago, led the police to the murdered body. It was in a cornfield and covered by corn stalks. The suspect worked on a farm owned by a prominent member of the GOP. In the age of Trump and Walls and Zero Tolerance, the nature of Tibbetts’ death was instantly exposed to an explosive political climate. The story also hit the papers on the same day Trump received a ton of bad news from a number of courthouses. If a white man had committed the murder, it would have been just a small tragedy in a rural town. Tweets would mostly have been local, and the case soon closed.
Mollie Tibbetts’ death was her own until it was discovered that she was killed by an “illegal migrant” from Mexico. (And the suspect may actually have worked in the US legally.) But at that point (he is illegal, he is Mexican, he is brown), she and her family (“Evil comes in every color“) effectively lost possession of her death and the chance for closure. You only need to examine another recent murder of a white woman to see the kind of difference dispossession makes.
This spring, a Wallingford woman, Lalita Byrnes, was stabbed 60 times by a white man (from which country?), Ian Flaherty (what was his job, carpenter?). This gruesome murder had lots of local attention, but it did not go national. Certainly the White House tweeted nothing about it.
The loss of Mollie Tibbetts is a devastating reminder that we must urgently fix our broken immigration laws. pic.twitter.com/0Kaz0FQw36
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 22, 2018
Byrnes’ tragedy had nothing to do with Walls, MS-13, and Zero Tolerance. This murder was hers to keep and take to the grave. She was just unlucky. Nothing more and nothing less.
And so we see how the US works. All Mexican migrants have been essentially charged with the murder of Mollie Tibbetts. This is what the headlines are saying. It’s exactly what the White House and Fox News mean by: It’s time to really deal with the immigration crisis. Pass new and tougher laws. More executive orders. Drag in the Dreamers, while we’re at it. Tibbetts was not murdered by this one person. She was murdered by a whole, frothing sea of brown people. This is why we have to throw these people into cages. They are all Rivera. Lalita Byrne, however, was killed by some guy. Certainly, we will not blame all white men or people for that death. Colorless domestic violence is politically worthless.
