The killing of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts points to the need for a tough stance on immigration and a border wall, President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Thursday.
"I watched the father, he kept saying — I sort of doubted it was going to happen — she is coming back," Trump told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt. "I say that's called hope, and it's a beautiful thing in a way. But now there is no hope."
Mexican immigrant Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 24, is facing charges of killing Tibbetts and hiding her body. His attorney maintained during a hearing Wednesday that he was in the United States legally.
"She was killed by a horrible person that came in from Mexico, illegally here," Trump told Earhardt. "He was found by ICE, our great ICE, who is abused by the Democrats and the left and without them you might not be sitting here so comfortably right now. I just think it's so sad."
Meanwhile, he said, construction has started on the border wall.
"We have spent $3.2 billion on it," he said. "We are asking for $5 billion for this year's funding...I would like to build it even faster, but dealing with the Democrats is very tough. The immigration laws are horrible. We're doing an incredible job. We are doing record breaking job. But we have bad laws. When you have bad laws you can do good but you could do better if you had good laws."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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