Bill Clinton suggests Laken Riley would still be alive if the border was “properly” secured, contradicting Republicans

Former President Bill Clinton said in a speech Sunday that the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley would not have happened if the suspected killer, an illegal immigrant, had been properly vetted.

While campaigning in the Peach State for Vice President Kamala Harris, Clinton accused her rival, former President Trump, of thwarting negotiations on a bipartisan border compromise in Congress because he wanted it to be a campaign issue.

He seemed to suggest that Riley's death could have been avoided if Congress had been able to pass a compromise – even though the alleged killer had already been vetted.

“She is the only candidate who has actually supported a bill that would limit immigration to a certain level each year and then made sure that we give people a decent place to live and not separate them from their children. And we did a full vetting before people came in. Now Trump has killed the bill,” Clinton said.

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Former President Bill Clinton's speech in Columbus, Georgia, focused heavily on the border issue. (Getty Images)

“You had a case in Georgia not long ago, right? They made an ad about a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yes, well, if they had all been properly vetted, this probably wouldn't have happened.

“And America isn't having enough babies to maintain our population, so we need immigrants who have been vetted to work – that wouldn't be a problem,” he added.

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has previously publicly confirmed that people found attempting to cross the border illegally will be screened and screened.

The suspected killer was encountered by CBP on September 8, 2022, after entering near El Paso, Texas, and was “paroled and released for further processing,” Fox News Digital previously told.

The bipartisan border deal also collapsed just earlier this year, years after the Venezuelan citizen accused of killing Riley entered the country, still under the watch of the Biden administration.

Clinton later praised the current administration's handling of the border and illegal immigration during a campaign stop in Georgia on Monday.

“Over the last three years, the Biden-Harris administration has taken increasingly tough measures and sought to control the border. And illegal border crossings have fallen every year for three years. “Our friends in the other party don’t want to talk about it,” Clinton said.

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It's notable that the former president's speech focused largely on the Georgia border, a state that President Biden won by less than 1% in 2020.

The issue of illegal border crossings has become a political lightning rod this election cycle. Democrats in a tight race — for both the presidency and for congressional and local posts — are emphasizing their support for tougher border security measures as Americans across the country see their regional infrastructure undermined by a surge of people seeking shelter in the United States. be charged

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at East Carolina University on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, in Greenville, North Carolina. (AP Photo/David Yeazell)

However, Republicans have long criticized Democrats' handling of border security, pointing to the record number of border crossings since Biden took office. They continued to do so throughout the campaign, arguing that Harris had failed to live up to her informal title as “border czar.”

Despite multiple high-profile media uses, Clinton accused Republicans of giving Harris the title – which he dismissed as inaccurate.

“They want to attack Kamala Harris and blame her for everything they managed to prevent. The way they say she was the 'border czar,' that's not her job,” Clinton said.

“Their job was to go to these other countries that were sending us a lot of people and try to get them to get them involved in a legal process while they were still in the country so that they wouldn't show up if they were illegal “Our border had to be taken care of on one side or the other, and then we ran the risk of people coming in who weren't properly vetted. She tried that.

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Former President Bill Clinton also accused former President Trump of not actually wanting to repair the border.

He also accused former President Trump of working to derail the bipartisan border compromise that failed in the Senate and which House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., viewed as “dead on arrival” in the House.

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“He said, ‘Oh my God, we can’t fix the border. What should I do for TV advertising? Who will I demonize every day? I don't go into politics to solve problems. I'm getting in.” “It's about creating problems and blaming others for them,” Clinton said.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Trump campaign for a response.

The former president is on the campaign trail through rural America on behalf of Harris' 2024 candidacy.

Get the latest updates on the 2024 election, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital Election Center.