The White House doubled down Monday that President Joe Biden did not apologize for using the word “illegal” to describe the undocumented Venezuelan man who allegedly killed a 22-year-old Georgia Laken Riley in his State of the Union speech last week.
“There was no apology anywhere in that conversation,” Olivia Dalton told reporters on Air Force One Monday. “He used a different word.”
Dalton added that she thought it was “unconscionable that there are some people who are playing politics with this young woman’s tragic murder.”
“Particularly at a time when, let’s not forget, House Republicans are standing in the way of a bipartisan border security agreement,” she said.
Over the weekend, Biden said he regretted using the word in an interview with Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC. “I shouldn’t have used illegal - it’s undocumented,” Biden told Capehart.
For years, immigration advocates have opposed calling any undocumented immigrants “illegals,” citing it as dehumanizing and inaccurate because being in the U.S. without documentation is not a criminal offense - but a civil one.
Some democrats have criticized the president’s use of the word. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, following the speech that “the rhetoric President Biden used tonight was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere.”
Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., said it’s time to move on, downplaying the comment.
“Let’s talk about what he did say. He talked about Dreamers — we had Dreamers in the audience. I had a guest who was a dreamer from California, and [she] was very happy. She didn’t even notice the fact that he said illegal versus undocumented. So the fact of the matter is, let’s talk about actions and not about possible misstatement that the president may have made,” argued Correa.
“He always says undocumented. He used the word illegal, ok, he used the word illegal. The fact is, he said I shouldn’t have used it. We move on.”
This controversy erupted as Republicans have made border security a centerpiece of their campaign against Biden. Republicans lashed out at the president following his MSNBC appearance.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., posting Sunday “Biden is more worried about disrespecting illegal alien murderers than stopping them from entering our country.”
Meanwhile, Biden’s all-but-certain opponent in the Nov. 2024 election, former President Donald Trump, also took a swing at Biden during a rally in Georgia this weekend.
“Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer. Laken Riley would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States,” said Trump, who met with Riley’s family during his visit to Georgia.