The Political Obsession Surrounding The Murder Of Mollie Tibbetts

BAILEY T. STEEN | MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2018

On the 18th of July, Mollie Tibbetts never returned home.
Joined by swarming television cameras, local law enforcement and the FBI, the Tibbetts family scoured the small town of Brooklyn, Iowa in search of the beloved 20-year-old college sophomore turned gone girl. The investigation, which spanned 34 days of organised hunting parties and combing through interviews and search tips, culminated in her murdered body being discovered on the rural side Poweshiek County with multiple stab wounds.
It took over a month to find Tibbetts buried beneath the ground. In less than a day, that murder was being used as a political agenda on Capital Hill.
âMollie Tibbetts, an incredible young woman, is now permanently separated from her family,â tweeted President Donald Trump in a public address video released earlier this week. A shameless reference to his border policy which quite literally separated illegal immigrant families upon entry. âA person came in from Mexico illegally and killed her,â he continued. âWe need the wall. We need our immigration laws changed. We need our border laws changed. We need Republicans to do it because the Democrats arenât going to do it.â
The president turned the nationâs eyes on Mr. Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the 24-year-old farmworker and Mexican immigrant, who was apprehended and charged with first-degree murder following her death, according to a report from the The Washington Post. Investigators were led to scene after Rivera claimed he found the body. Following hundreds of interviews, police found security surveillance near an area where Tibbetts frequently jogged and were able to place a nearby Chevrolet Malibu as belonging to Rivera. His alibi for the night of the murder reportedly didnât check out when cross referenced with all their available evidence.
Allan Richards, the defence lawyer for Rivera, is trying to argue that his client is living in the United States legally. This narrative was also debunked by authorities who found he obtained his farmland position through presenting a stolen ID. This means he was able to bypass both the federal E-Verify check, a process which determines the legal status of hirees, as well as restrictions enforced by the Social Security Administration.
The court will have to determine how these legal compromises occurred, meanwhile the question remains whether the president and the two major political parties have just compromised future jurors whoâll be assigned to this case. As though purposefully avoiding the important 2018 mid-term issues, President Trump and members of Congress are all using the murder case for their political ends despite the victimâs family demanding privacy.
âStop being a fucking snake and using my cousinâs death as political propaganda,â one tweeted to conservative activist Candace Owens. âEvil comes in EVERY colour. [Stop] generalizing a whole population based on some bad individuals. Take her name out of your mouth.â
But Tibbetts isnât the only name being dragged through the mud of the immigration debate. Sheâs just their most effective symbol yet.
Since 2016, Trump hasnât been afraid to serve political red meat to his Republican base. When it wasnât organised chants of âbuild the wallâ, the audience for Trumpâs campaign rallies would be graced with the stage presence of the âangel momsâ â a movement organised by the families of those harmed by illegal immigrants â where theyâd push for stronger borders and anti-immigrant policy. This same movement helped with the introduction of the âVictims Of Immigration Crime Engagementâ (VOICE), a government hotline designed to tackle what the name implies.
Itâs genius, albeit immoral politics, striking at the core of Trumpâs agenda that monsters will cross the border to harm the children. It just requires some memorable martyrs for the cause. These previously touted families, despite all their partisan right-wing politics, just couldnât generate the media attention quite like a Mollie Tibbetts character. Although The Daily Dot notes her Twitter account was littered with left-wing posts, death hasnât stopped these conservatives from âowning the libsâ.
Damned be the familyâs wishes when thereâs elections to be won, right?
Just see Iowaâs own Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, who was quick to release statements saying she was âangry that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our communityâ. She, alongside her colleagues, began reciting the GOP talking points and campaign ads appealing to women voters who, according to the polls, are growing anxious with the current political climate.
âDemocrats do not want to have an election on these things,â Pat Caddell, one of the GOPâs leading pollsters, told The New York Times. âOn immigration, the Democratic Party has been pulled so far left. And thatâs the story of our politics this year: deserting the center.â
But is this the real story? Or could it be that Republicans are growing reactionary due to the growing âAbolish ICEâ movement?
In 2003, the Bush administration constructed the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to âinvestigate criminal and terrorist activityâ of illegal immigrants within the US borders. Democrats, who view the agencyâs behaviour as bordering between unethical to unconstitutional, have called for the government to revert back to the Clinton era of letting Homeland Security handle such affairs.
Itâs no call for open borders, lack of border security or law enforcement. Itâs a conservative move to cut an agency. Yet this hasnât stopped the conservatives from strawmanning the debate. The New York Times cited several campaign ads and segments focusing on the case. One of which was released by the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the conservative superPAC, who accused Kansas Cityâs candidate Sharice Davids of being for âopen borders, amnesty â a risk we canât take.â
âShe was killed by a person who is exactly what Trump has been warning about,â Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said on a tour across several Fox News programs. âThe left has to bear the burden of being the party that is tolerating Americans being killed by people who are here illegally,â he added. Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican, followed suit saying âMollie would be alive if our government had taken immigration enforcement seriously years ago.â And finally it was Laura Ingraham, who introduced Trump at the 2016 GOP convention, who opened her show by stating the obvious: âFox News is the only network fully covering the case.â
Trump framed thoughts such as Ingrahamâs near perfectly. During this same time, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and other mainstream media outlets focused on the arrest of both former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort and the revelations from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. âSee, the mainstream media is at it again,â echoed Chris Buskirk, a conservative writer and radio host who supports President Trump. This gave his crowd the perfect opportunity to cry against the media for the appearance of bias when, in reality, the criminality of political operatives is slightly more important than the death of a random person whose family demand their space.
âIt is unfortunate that lawmakers are politicizing this absolutely awful tragedy,â said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy organization, speaking to The Times. âOne would wish that cooler heads would prevail and that we could have a rational, humane conversation about immigration policy.â

Thanks for reading!
Bailey T. Steen is a journalist, designer and film critic residing in the heart of Victoria, Australia. Heâs also a proud Putin Puppet⢠on occasion.
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Cheers, darlings!! đ