Thread: Some of Mollie Tibbetts' family don't want her death politicized

Some of Mollie Tibbetts' family don't want her death politicized


By Paul P. Murphy and Jason Hanna, CNN
Updated 11:43 AM ET, Thu August 23, 2018

(CNN)Some relatives of Mollie Tibbetts are pushing back against politicians who are blaming the country's immigration system for the Iowa college student's death.


A body believed to be Tibbetts' was found in Iowa on Tuesday, a month after she went missing during an evening jog. The man arrested in her death is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.




Politicians blame immigration laws for Mollie Tibbetts' fate

President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians have highlighted the case to argue for stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
But some of Tibbetts' family members, including her aunt, Billie Jo Calderwood, say they don't want her death to be used for political leverage.

"I don't want Mollie's memory to get lost amongst politics," Calderwood told CNN, emphasizing that she's speaking only for herself.

She said her family received an outpouring of love from people of all races, religions and ethnicities during the search for her niece.

"It's not about race, it's about people joining together to do good," said Calderwood, who posted a similar message on Facebook.

Tibbetts' immediate family released a statement Tuesday focusing on their grief and gratitude.

"Our hearts are broken.

On behalf of Mollie's entire family, we thank all of those from around the world who have sent their thoughts and prayers for our girl. We know that many of you will join us as we continue to carry Mollie in our hearts forever.

At this time, our family asks that we be allowed the time to process our devastating loss and share our grief in private.

Again, thank you for the outpouring of love and support that has been shared in Mollie's name. We remain forever grateful."

At a vigil for Tibbetts in Iowa City on Wednesday, Mollie's brother Jake asked those in the crowd to remember the good over the bad, and to appreciate how people across the state and country joined together in the aftermath of her disappearance.

"Remember this as a time that the country came together for one girl. One girl that loved everyone. One girl that loved everything and wanted the best for everyone. Don't remember this as the time that someone made a very poor decision and took a girl away," he said.

"We're going to miss her dearly but, to be honest, what made her so special is she was just like anyone standing here. She loved to run. She loved Harry Potter. She loved the hawks. She loved her family. She was goofy. She was clumsy," Jake Tibbetts said.

One of Tibbetts' second cousins, Samantha Lucas, also told CNN she wants Tibbetts' death removed from political discussion.

Lucas said she didn't know her second cousin well, and isn't speaking for the whole family. But she says knows enough about Tibbetts to believe "she would not want this to be used as fuel against undocumented immigrants."

CNN contacted Lucas after she pushed back against people on social media who mentioned Tibbetts as they railed against illegal immigration.

At the vigil for Tibbetts Wednesday, a friend of the 20-year-old said she didn't want the tragedy to be politicized.

"I also know what Mollie stood for ... and she would not approve," the friend, Breck Goodman, said. "So I don't want her death to be used as propaganda. I don't want her death to be used for more prejudice and for more discrimination, and I don't think she would want that, either."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/23/us/mo...ath/index.html

Shame on CNN for shopping around to try to defend the illegal alien and pro-illegal immigration movement. Mollie Tibbetts is dead because of our government's failure to enforce our existing border and immigration laws and Article IV of the US Constitution.

While we all respect and grieve for Mollile's friends and family members it does not matter what their poltiical views are nor Mollie's because as Americans we all have the right to be concerned about illegal alien crimes that could affect any of us next.

One of Tibbetts' second cousins, Samantha Lucas, also told CNN she wants Tibbetts' death removed from political discussion.

I'm sorry Ms. Lucas, this issue is bigger than you and Mollie Tibbetts. You even said yourself that you weren't close to her. Perhaps if you were, you would feel differently. All murders committed by illegal aliens in this country are 100% preventable.

You want to talk about separating families? Let's talk about Mollie Tibbetts.


Authorities said University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, 20, was found dead about a month after she went missing in Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18, 2018. (Poweshiek County sheriff's office)



John KassContact ReporterChicago Tribune


Go ahead and play your word games and tell me about the cruelty of borders, the kindness of sanctuary cities and the political wisdom of abolishing ICE.


Tell me about government’s lack of compassion, and of the heartbreak of families separated from each other through broken immigration policy.


Tell me how racist it is, how cruel it is to think that a nation should control its own borders and stop, rather than reward, illegal immigration.


And then tell me about Mollie Tibbetts.


The 20-year-old University of Iowa student was separated from her family too.


She was separated from those she loved a month ago, when she went jogging near her home near Des Moines. Her accused killer, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, authorities said, was in the country illegally. He worked at a large dairy farm owned by a prominent Iowa Republican.


His lawyers, seeking a gag order in the case, insist Rivera is here legally. The truth will eventually come out, as well as the circumstances of her death, with an autopsy to be performed.


Investigators said her alleged killer stalked her, approached her, then said he blacked out and couldn’t remember much. But he remembered enough to help police find her body in a cornfield.


And ever since, Mollie Tibbetts has been pulled at by politics.


Democrats who want the Latino vote ignore her or they pivot, smoothly, making their pitch for “compassionate” immigration policy and attacking President Donald Trump.


Republicans who are pushing stronger border control use her as an emotional symbol. Republicans whose agribusiness political contributors want cheap labor for their packing houses and their farms avoid her, as if she was never here.


Apparently, they really don’t mind a few dead Americans if they can keep to their political talking points.


And Trump, who rode to the White House by tapping into a real, desperate and bipartisan American desire to stop illegal immigration, disfigures the debate. He exaggerates the threat of crime by those in the country illegally, making it seem as if they’re driving a violent national crime spree when statistics say otherwise.
But victims of violent immigrants here illegally are more than mere statistics or a point from which to pivot and attack.

They’re more than broken eggs in the political policy wars.

They were real people. They lived real lives. They were loved. They were daughters and sons and husbands and wives. And they are dead, the result of immigration policy and partisan politics.


Because if we actually did something about illegal immigration, rather than shout at each other and play politics, Mollie Tibbetts would be alive today.

She’d be alive like so many others would be alive.

Kate Steinle would be alive. She wouldn’t have died while walking along a pier in San Francisco with her father when a habitual criminal here illegally fired a gun. He claimed it was all an accident and was acquitted of murder.

“Help me, Dad,” were her last words.

We don’t know the last words of Dennis McCann of Chicago. But he’d be alive too.

Instead, McCann was dragged to his death under a car driven by a drunk in Chicago in 2012. McCann was hit so hard that his shoes were left on the pavement. The rest of him was pulled a half-mile under the car along Logan Boulevard.

The drunk was jailed and charged, but under an allegedly compassionate policy pushed by Cook County Democrats pandering for Latino votes, the driver, Saul Chavez, was not held for pickup by federal immigration authorities.

He was compassionately allowed to make bail. And once out on the street, Saul Chavez fled back home to Mexico. And there were no real answers for McCann’s horrified and stunned family.
All they were given were vague, political regrets and mind-numbing Democratic Party talk by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle about process and writs. Preckwinkle’s a powerful political boss. McCann is dead. Chavez is gone.

So please, tell me about political cruelty.

Trump vaulted to the top of the Republican presidential pile by targeting illegal immigration. The Republican establishment was not pleased. And Democrats campaigning against Trump use his exaggerations as reason to avoid victims like Tibbetts.

Or step over them quickly, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and presumptive candidate for president, did on CNN the other day.

“I’m so sorry for the family here and I know this is hard not only for her family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa,” Warren said.

Warren will go through Iowa next year and eat corn and talk about close-knit families and demonstrate warmth as she campaigns in what her aides will call “the heartland.” She might pick up a pork chop and pose in farm clothes next to a bale of hay.

But she stepped over Mollie Tibbets and then it was time for her pivot, a pivot that was ruthless as it was obvious in its cynicism.

“Last month, I went down to the border and I saw where children had been taken away from their mothers,” Warren said on CNN. “I met with those mothers — who had been lied to, who didn’t know where their children were, who didn’t have a chance to talk to their children. And there was no plan for how they would be reunified with their children.”

Sen. Warren, isn’t that horrifying, parents not knowing the whereabouts of their children, not having a chance to say goodbye?

Like the parents of Mollie Tibbetts, after their daughter went out for a run, never to come home.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...22-story.html#

Can you IMAGINE how terrified that young lady was! Being stalked and thrown in a car and killed. They did not say if she was raped. We can assume the worst from these creeps!

This was a nice neighborhood in the country...nice homes, farms, corn fields.

THIS CANCER HAS SPREAD INTO ALL OUR COMMUNITIES AND IT IS GETTING WORSE!

This is despicable.



GET EVERY ONE OF THESE ILLEGAL ALIENS OFF OUR SOIL AND NO DACA!

THAT PIECE OF DUNG ALSO HAD A CHILD! DEPORT HIS ILLEGAL ALIEN GIRLFRIEND AND THAT CHILD!

THAT IS WHAT THEY DO...THEY COME HERE AND GIVE BIRTH TO CHILDREN WHO TURN INTO THUGS AND THEN FLEE FROM THEM!

THEY COME HERE FLEEING FROM VIOLENCE FROM THE VERY SPAWN THEY GAVE BIRTH TO AND BRING IT HERE!

PUT A TRAVEL BAN ON MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA...THEY CANNOT COME HERE UNTIL THEY STABLIZE THEIR COUNTRY!

Beezer wrote (excerpt):

PUT A TRAVEL BAN ON MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA...THEY CANNOT COME HERE UNTIL THEY STABLIZE THEIR COUNTRY!

Won't work. It's the ones coming here illegally that need to be stopped and a travel ban won't do that. A complete travel ban would never get through the courts anyway ..... oh, and yes the lawsuits would by flying if such an attempt was made.

What we need to do is concentrate on real things, like securing our porous revolving door border!