Biden campaign co-chair: Using term ‘illegal’ was ‘small mistake’

Biden-Harris 2024 campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said Friday that President Biden should not have used the word “illegal” to refer to a person, calling the president’s use of the term a “small mistake” that should be understood in the context of his broader message.

Biden used the term to refer to José Ibarra, a Venezuelan national charged with the murder of college student Laken Riley.

“Laken Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right,” Biden said. 

Ibarra has been widely reported to be undocumented, though he is technically a parolee.

“He probably should have used a different word, and I think he would know that,” Landrieu said on CNN Friday morning.

“But what you should notice about that is not that he made a small mistake. The big thing that he did right — and this is what this president always does — is express empathy to people,” he added.

“He expressed kindnesses to people. He understands, because as you know, he lost a number of children in his life.”

Republicans have taken Riley’s murder as a banner, generalizing the individual crime to make a broader claim of immigrant-borne criminality.

Biden used the term “illegal” to describe Ibarra in response to heckling from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was wearing a shirt with the phrase “say her name” in reference to Riley and the campaign to publicize her murder as a statement on immigration.

Multiple studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit murder — and other crimes — than natural-born U.S. citizens.

Biden made reference to that fact in his response to Greene, before turning to Riley’s parents.

“But how many thousands of people being killed by legals? To her parents I say, my heart goes out to you having lost children myself,” he said.

Yet Biden’s words were ill-received by many in the immigrant advocacy world, including some Democrats who were in the audience like Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), who live-posted “no human being is illegal” on X, formerly Twitter.

Landrieu pivoted Friday from Biden’s “small mistake” to the president’s attempts to pass immigration reform, highlighting the administration’s early comprehensive reform proposal and support for the bipartisan Senate border policy bill.

“On top of that the more important issue is as the president when he first got in office, one of the first things he did was send an immigration bill to Congress and they did nothing,” said Landrieu, adding that “do-nothing right-wing members of Congress shut [the bipartisan deal] down because Donald Trump told them to.”

Others in the Biden campaign sprung to the president’s defense Friday.

In a call with reporters, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez — the first Latina to run a presidential reelection effort — defended Biden’s relationship with the immigrant community.

“You know, our community knows Joe. They know who is fighting for our community, they know who’s fighting for us. They know the incredible track record that he has in investing and so many, you know, areas that are benefiting our community and they also know his values, his values of faith, of family of hard work, all of those are so consistent with what our community stands for,” Chavez Rodriguez said.

Alex Gangitano contributed.