Bill Clinton suggests Laken Riley would still be alive if border 'properly' secured, hitting Republicans

Former President Bill Clinton said in a speech Sunday that Georgia nursing student Laken Riley's murder would not have happened if the alleged killer, an illegal immigrant, was properly vetted.

While campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in the Peach State, Clinton accused her rival, former President Trump, of tanking negotiations over 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 was able to pass a compromise – despite the alleged killer having already been vetted.

"She's the only candidate who has actually endorsed a bill that would hold down immigration any given year to a certain point and then made sure we gave people a decent place to live, didn't divide people from their children. And we did total vetting before people got in. Now, Trump killed the bill," Clinton said. 

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"You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn't you? They made an ad about it, a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they'd all been properly vetted that probably wouldn't have happened."

"And America isn't having enough babies to keep our populations up, so we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work – there wouldn't be a problem," he added.

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), meanwhile, previously publicly confirmed that people who are encountered trying to cross the border illegally are vetted and screened.

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

The bipartisan border deal also only failed earlier this year, years after the Venezuelan national accused of killing Riley entered the country, still under the Biden administration's watch.

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

"For the last three years, the Biden-Harris administration has done increasingly tough things, trying to control the border. And illegal crossings have gone down every year for three years. Our friends in the other party don't want to talk about that," Clinton said.

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

The issue of illegal crossings at the border has become a political lightening rod in this election cycle. Democrats in tight races – both for the presidency and congressional and local positions – are emphasizing their support for tougher border security measures as Americans across the country have seen their area infrastructures strained by a deluge of people seeking shelter in the U.S.

However, Republicans have long criticized Democrats’ handling of border security, citing the record number of border crossings since Biden took office. They have continued to do so during the campaign by arguing Harris has failed to live up to her informal "border czar" title.

Despite several instances of high-profile use in the media, Clinton accused Republicans of bestowing the title on Harris – which he dismissed as inaccurate.

"They want to attack Kamala Harris and blame her for anything they managed to keep from happening. Like they claim she was the ‘border czar,’ that's not what her jobs are," Clinton said.

"Her job was to go down to these other countries that were sending us a lot of people and trying to get them, to enroll them in a legal process while they were still in the country so they wouldn't be illegally trafficked, show up our border, had to be cared for on one side of it or another, and then we'd run the risk of having people get in here who weren't properly vetted. That's what she tried to do."

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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., deemed "dead on arrival" in the House. 

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"He said, ‘Oh my God, we can't fix the border. What am I going to do for TV ads? Who am I going to demonize every day? I don't get into politics to solve problems. I get in it to create problems and blame other people for doing,’" Clinton said.

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

The former president is on a campaign swing through rural America on behalf of Harris' 2024 bid.

Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.