The Exploitation of Tragedy: Examining the Laken Riley Act, Iryna’s Law, and the Racialization of Immigration in the United States

Author: Sasha Leonard

November 18, 2025

Introduction

In sociology, the concept of deservingness refers to people’s rationales when judging who warrants resources or support. The CARIN framework, which was first developed by sociologist Wim van Oorschot (2000), expands on this concept by offering five principles with which to analyze how people separate the deserving from the undeserving. The five principles include control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need, and scholars both within social welfare literature and outside of it have applied these criteria to identify and examine how these judgements affect those in need of social welfare resources and governmental support.

Evidently, perceptions of these principles can differ based on factors such as individual beliefs, socioeconomic background, and personal experiences. Nonetheless, at the core of this framework is an emphasis on how perceptions of the value of social policies, welfare programs, and attitudes toward specific groups are not neutral and do not exist in a vacuum. This article leans on this framework to discuss the signing of two recent acts of legislation, the Laken Riley Act and Iryna’s Law. Both represent a further plunge into the dark abyss of xenophobia and racism in the U.S. rather than proper reflection on violence against women and the pitfalls of the American criminal legal system and mental health resources. In essence, using deservingness theory to explore some of the narratives which emerged out of the tragedies that preceded these laws invites a rather grim but necessary conversation that challenges and ultimately rejects the racialized associations between crime and immigrants. 

Deservingness theory has previously been cited to evaluate public opinion on immigration policies as well as perceptions of certain historically marginalized groups, refugees, and other immigrant populations (Bervik and Ferris 2024; Clark et. al 2022; Ratzmann and Sahraoui 2021; Shiff 2021). Within the rhetoric that followed the murders that prompted the creation of the Laken Riley Act and Iryna’s Law, the determination of immigrant communities’ deservingness to feel safe and be protected seemed heavily influenced by CARIN’s “Identity” principle. In other words, what appeared to mainly shape the narratives around both tragedies was how easily the person judging one’s deservingness of safety and solidarity could identify with the person of immigrant status.  

In the U.S., the boundary of belonging (i.e., of who is considered an insider or an outsider), and by extension the boundary of deservingness, is often mapped onto simplified racial categories. This can be traced along various racial policies within the U.S. throughout its relatively short history that have aimed to create racial distinctions among its population to maintain power and control for those it considers White. Prominent examples of these policies include the “Three-Fifths Compromise,” the “One-Drop Rule,” and the “Blood Quantum Rule”--all of which ultimately served to promote white supremacy, disempower Black and Indigenous populations (and later other non-White peoples), and cement a racial hierarchy that translated onto who could properly belong to the nation of the U.S. and who could only ever be an uncomfortable and unwanted visitor to it. The legacies of these policies, and other legal frameworks that implicitly reproduced racial boundaries, still exist in the form of systemic racism which can manifest as redlining practices, racial bias in healthcare, mass incarceration, and educational racism. The fabric of the U.S., in its own self conceptualization, is threaded with race as a central indicator of belonging and deservingness. 

Following this understanding then, many of the justifications of the Laken Riley Act and Iryna’s Law, which conflate criminality with non-citizens and violence with DEI, suggest that an immigrant’s deservingness of solidarity parallels this racial mapping. Particularly, blatant generalizations of non-White non-citizens as violent offenders who should not be in the U.S. juxtaposed with portrayals of Iryna Zarutska, a refugee and non-citizen who would be considered White in the U.S. conception of race, as an insider and someone who belonged reproduce this racial mapping. Anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and ability, can become an immigrant or be forced to flee their home in search of safety, stability, and peace. Yet, recent discourse surrounding immigration in the U.S. has significantly relied on the “perpetual other” as a way to define who is distinctly unable to find belonging within the U.S. national identity. 

The “perpetual other,” as defined by psychologists Devos and Banaji (2005) refers to a stereotype that ethnic minorities in the U.S. will always be seen as outsiders, regardless of legal status, in a White dominant society. Within immigration discourse, non-White non-citizens are automatically cast into this “perpetual other” category, as will be evidenced later by examples of xenophobic political rhetoric. In being seen as a “perpetual other,” someone who will never be able to fully assimilate into American belonging, non-White non-citizens are then seen as “diluting” and threatening the integrity of such belonging. This is because inhabiting an outsider status in the context of American identity can be understood as inhabiting a status that fundamentally threatens or disrupts the boundaries of U.S. national identity which is rooted in the subjugation of ethnic and racial minorities. 

Taking deservingness theory as our foundation, the Laken Riley Act and Iryna’s Law demonstrate the exploitation of two tragedies to further cement a racialized boundary of belonging and “American-ness.” Such exploitation renders it difficult to believe that either law intentionally aims to focus on obtaining justice for the absolutely deplorable murders of Laken Riley and Iryna Zarutska. The reason being that the focus of these laws seem to be on further propagating the false link between violent crime and non-White non-citizens and scapegoating DEI and policies aimed at addressing racial inequities as encouraging crime. Explaining his support for Iryna’s Law, Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) pointed to “woke, weak-on-crime policies” as the reason for Zarutska’s death. Clearly, Berger sought to blame the broader and more complex movement to demand racial equity and justice within American institutions and the U.S. as the culprit for Zarutska’s murder, and he sees Iryna’s Law as the needed opposite of such “woke-ness.” 

Similarly, before the vote on the Laken Riley Act, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La) said to reporters, “You now have a willing partner in the Senate that actually wants to confront real problems facing families, so [...] [y]ou don’t have more murders of innocent people because of an open border. President Trump has already taken action to start reversing that open border.” Once more, the mention of borders in conjunction with a violent murder to insinuate a connection between the two, and specifically a connection between Brown non-citizens and violence, serves to uphold immigration and the perpetual other as anomalous things to fear–harbringers of destruction. Nonetheless, justice for these two women cannot occur if the legislation meant to address their deaths instead fashions convoluted solutions that ignore institutional issues and replace them with racism and xenophobia.  

Weaponizing Gender-Based Violence Against Immigrant Rights

On the morning of February 22, 2024, Laken Hope Riley was found unconscious and with injuries in Oconee Forest Park by University of Georgia officers after Riley did not return from a run. She was pronounced deceased on the scene with the cause of her death being attributed to blunt force trauma. The next day, José Antonio Ibarra was arrested based on “community input, campus video footage, and physical evidence.” He would go on to be charged with several felonies, murder and aggravated assault with intent to rape; he was ultimately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole that November. At the time of her death, Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University. She was a beloved member of her community, known for her compassion, kindness, and deep care for causes such as children’s healthcare and women’s safety. She was a friend, sister, daughter, and someone with dreams, aspirations, and hopes. 

That her death was tragic and avoidable is evident. However, rather than honoring her legacy and addressing violence against women and even perhaps gaps in University of Georgia’s campus security, the aftermath of her death was largely focused on Ibarra’s undocumented status and insinuations that undocumented immigrants are regularly perpetrators of violent crimes. For instance, following Ibarra’s guilty verdict, Representative Marjorie Greene (R-Ga) remarked, “[Laken] would still be alive today if not for the policies of open-borders Democrats. [...] Tragically, she is not the first American life lost at the hands of illegal aliens.” Greene went on, emphasizing the “securing of borders” as a welcome act that would prevent such violence, “Democrats are responsible for this crisis. The blood is on their hands. [...] Mass deportations and a secure border are just 61 days away. If you’re in this country illegally: PACK. YOUR. BAGS.” It is not difficult to read between the lines and understand Greene’s clear association of non-citizens within the U.S. with a threat to American life. Following the confirmation of Ibarra’s undocumented status in conjunction with the fact that he had been arrested and charged previously for unlawful entry and child endangerment, like Greene, many politicians and political figures such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, and Representative Mike Collins (R-Ga) promoted narratives that Riley’s murder was wholly a consequence of immigration policies. In doing so, they further encouraged the idea that the majority of immigrants entering the U.S. are violent, immoral, and ultimately, murderers. 

Most notably, during his acceptance of the presidential nomination at the Republican National Committee (RNC), President Donald Trump fueled anti-immigrant anxieties and sentiments by saying, "Yet another American life was stolen by a criminal alien set free by this administration. Tonight, America, this is my vow. I will not let these killers and criminals into our country." He also said of Riley’s death, once more focusing the narrative onto his stark disapproval of the Biden Administration’s immigration policies: “What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven. [...] Laken Riley would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country.” Trump pins Riley’s murder on immigration, effectively villainizing the act of immigration itself, and goes so far as to make Ibarra out to be representative of all non-citizens entering the U.S. or hailing from Latin America and the Caribbean. In doing so, Trump, like the other politicians mentioned, used Riley’s death as support for his own xenophobic ideologies which paint non-citizens from nations beyond the U.S.’s southern border as inherent threats not only to American life but also to the integrity of the U.S. and its understanding of belonging.

Such framing and similar narratives about Riley’s murder also imply a stripping of Riley’s personhood and individual impact on her community from her legacy. That is to say, extending Ibarra’s vile actions to be representative of all non-White non-citizens and simultaneously framing Riley’s death as a small statistical point in a conversation about immigration makes discussions of her murder no longer about her specifically and what could have prevented her death. Instead, her murder became about a deep political divide on immigration policies and crime, thus removing the specifics of her victimhood and replacing it with the supposed victimhood of the U.S. and its citizens as a whole caused by the imagined terror of non-citizens. 

Accordingly, the shift of her death being rooted in a situation involving a person’s violence against another to a single person’s crime being representative of the disposition of all others who share his racialized features or legal status should be understood as Riley becoming a detached representation of Trump’s idealized America. An America without immigrants from parts of the world he deems undesirable as when he so brashly described immigrants from “[...] South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. [...] from Africa, from Asia, all over the world,” as “poisoning the blood of our nation.” Immigrants from regions that are distinctively non-White, again according to the U.S. 's simplified racial categories, are, according to Trump, fundamentally opposed to the health and sanctity of the U.S. Narratives around Riley’s death, and the subsequent legislation, sought to further reify this idea.

Once the narrative became the battleground for promoting more aggressive immigration policies, the main, and only important point of this case–that being the loss of Riley–was relegated to the background. No longer was the focus on who Riley was as a person, who she might have become, or even why Riley and so many other women are targeted for violent crimes. Instead, this political framing, which focused on associating criminality with immigrants that “look like” Ibarra, made Riley into a talking point that could be quickly referenced in a dangerous fiction that on account of Ibarra’s undocumented status was he a bad person. 

Numerous studies have been conducted and found that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens, and in fact are involved as perpetrators in violent crimes significantly less than U.S. citizens. If it isn’t the case that “thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals [are set loose] into the U.S.,” then it isn’t some evidenced or factual disposition to violence of immigrants that fuels statements such as Donald Trump’s. Evidently, it is an implied idea that undocumented immigrants and non-citizens are just not “American” in the way that Trump and other proponents of this bill seem to align with. It is also the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants and non-citizens that makes them attractive scapegoats and easily portrayed as a singular and manageable danger that, if contained, will greatly reduce the violence that has become linked to the “openness” of U.S. borders. 

For that reason, it was this narrative that ultimately set the stage for Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga) to introduce the Laken Riley Act in 2024. Though it did not initially pass the Senate, its reintroduction this year saw support from both Republicans and Democrats. The Laken Riley Act was signed into law by President Trump on January 29, making it one of the first of his second term. The bill mandates federal detention of undocumented immigrants and non-citizens who are arrested for alleged petty crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, and shoplifting. It also permits states to sue the federal government for alleged violations of immigration law. Such legislation is unprecedented. In fact, critics of the bill, including many immigrant and human rights advocacy organizations such as the International Refugee Assistance Project and the National Immigration Law Center, have pointed to the unjust nature of the law wherein merely being accused of a crime and then indefinitely detained will remove due process for many undocumented immigrants and non-citizens. 

President Donald Trump signs the Laken Riley Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2025. [Image source: NBC News/Associated Press]

Moreover, the allowance of states to sue the federal government and essentially dictate immigration policy could also invite exponentially more chaos into an already broken immigration system, and ultimately permit more harm to undocumented immigrants and non-citizens. Perhaps most explicitly though, this bill, which purports to be in the service of preventing another tragedy like Riley’s murder, obscures the character of this crime–that of gender-based violence–by moving immigration to the forefront. Riley’s murder should not be a conversation about immigration; it should be one about violence against women. Regrettably, this bill and the context in which it was created and signed demonstrate the exploitation of Riley’s death to reinforce a xenophobic narrative that immigrants are inherently dangerous to both Americans and the essence of the nation. Riley’s life and death no longer belonged to just her or her loved ones to mourn and remember, but became a flashpoint of political debate on immigration.

The Ideal Refugee: Scapegoating Blackness

Iryna’s Law was named after Iryna Zarutska, an aspiring Veterinary Assistant and Ukrainian refugee who was cruelly murdered on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina while on her way home from work. On August 22, 2025, Decarlos Brown Jr., who suffers from schizophrenia, pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed Zarutska. She died soon after on the train from her injuries. Three years before, in August 2022, Zarutska had fled the war in Ukraine and made a life for herself here in the U.S. She was an artist, a caring neighbor, a warm smile, and a beloved friend, sister, daughter, and community member. 

In the months since Zarutska’s murder, conversations around the circumstances of her death have been dominated by condemnations not just of Brown, but also of DEI, of the Black woman magistrate who released him on cashless bail for a previous non-violent crime, and of Black bystanders who were on the train at the time of the murder. Nonsensical correlations about Brown’s horrid actions, his Blackness, and DEI were spouted through comments from the general public and prominent figures in the political space. Plainly, much of the coverage of Zarutska’s murder has emphasized the racial dynamics of the case–a White victim and a Black perpetrator–and has reproduced misleading and fictitious narratives about DEI leading to leniency on crime and Brown’s killing of Zarutska and emphasized an imaginary of increased Black-on-white crime. Contrary to what some may believe, including Elon Musk, who loudly declared the opposite of this fact on the social media platform X, Black-on-White crime is a non-issue. Of homicides, 80 to 90% of them are intraracial, meaning most of the time both Black and White victims are killed by Black and White perpetrators respectively. Furthermore, while the critique that more should have been done to monitor Brown is well grounded, the primary issue should be with unacceptable current approaches to mental health in the criminal legal system and not with the magistrate who carried out her duties.

Nonetheless, Iryna’s Law neglects to address a root cause of Brown’s murder of Zarutska, which is the criminal legal system’s inability to properly approach crimes perpetrated by those who are mentally ill, unhoused, and/or battling addiction. The law itself includes several provisions not limited to ridding of cashless bail, requiring evaluation for involuntary mental health commitment for certain defendants, prohibiting the recreation of the Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice, and a reform of death penalty procedures in the state. Alas, it is doubtful that the law would have kept Brown in jail had it been in place earlier. The law creeps into potential violations of constitutional rights in its call to not release even those with low level misdemeanors on bond. It also substitutes creating a more thoughtful and extensive mental health response within the criminal legal system with punitive measures and more expectations on an already overburdened  mental health system. The context from which the law emerged and the associated narratives justifying its passing have insinuated that it is more a performance of aggressive solutions borne out of partly grief and partly disingenuous political fervor than the desire to remember Zarutska and to address the systemic failures that facilitated her death. 

Fundamentally, racialized framings of Brown’s crime have risked marring Zarutska’s death by an unproductive discussion that caters towards racists and damaging portrayals of the mentally ill and unhoused as subhuman. This act that has been signed, seemingly under the guise of preventing another similar tragedy, is ultimately misguided.  

On Deservingness And The “Legitimate” American

Returning to the initial inquiries articulated in this article’s introduction, the purpose of this exploration of the Laken Riley Act and Iryna’s Law was to make a connection between Laken Riley, Iryna Zarutska, and the resulting legislation that followed their tragedies. Furthermore, deservingness theory may offer a tool with which to critically examine the narratives and methods of framing around both incidents. Explicitly, the connection between the two cases lies in that Riley and Zarutska’s deaths were similarly exploited through certain framings that martyred both women as figures who could represent a specific and idealized image of the U.S. In effect, this martyring promoted the scapegoating of those that are deemed undesirable–or expressly unable to identify with the visual image of Riley and Zarutska. Deservingness theory is relevant insofar as it locates how, at the center of the conversations for both tragedies, the question of who threatens the sanctity of traditional, American ideals became the prominent inquiry as opposed to perhaps what threatens the morals and ethics that our society should strive towards. The first question inherently requires a generalization about groups of people, whether that be non-White non-citizens in Riley’s case or, in Zarutska’s case, the mentally ill, unhoused, and Black people. The second question focuses on identifying systemic and social issues like gender-based violence and lacking infrastructure to address those in the criminal legal system who are unhoused and/or suffering from mental illness or addiction. It allows conversation to focus on the circumstances that facilitated the crime instead of allowing the perpetrator of such crimes to represent an entire population of people who merely happen to share a part of their identity or circumstances with them.

Importantly, the racial dynamics of Riley’s case are also significant and cannot be excluded from articulating the connection between the framings of both tragedies. In creating a figure of almost purity through Riley, a visibly White woman who was made to represent an idealized essence of the U.S., the crime of Ibarra, a Brown foreigner became all the more abhorrent and vicious. That is not to suggest that there should not have been outrage about her death because she was White, but rather that the response of making her death about immigration emerged from the racial dynamics of the victim-perpetrator relationship. This becomes all the more clear when examined alongside the referencing of Zarutska’s refugee status and its immediate absorption by the qualifier of her pursuing the “American Dream.” 

The treatment of legal status in both cases was notably different and most indicative of the presence of deservingness evaluations. In Zarutska’s case, her refugee status was pinpointed to signal the depth of grief and outrage one should feel for the murder and simultaneously subsumed into the idea of her as the ideal “potential” American, someone striving toward the “American Dream.” In Riley’s case however, seemingly all non-citizens who shared nationality, ethnicity, or phenotypical traits with Ibarra were classed as criminals--their pursuit of the “American Dream” replaced with a projected immorality and violence. Consider that Trump’s comments about non-citizens are consistently rooted in a fiction that immigrants from largely Black and Brown countries are disease-ridden criminals who seek to destroy the U.S. Him quickly clinging onto Riley’s murder, and particularly Ibarra’s undocumented status cannot be isolated from his well-recorded racism and discrimination against non-White peoples and non-citizens. Immigration and legal status then, in the context of both of these tragedies, acted as critical rhetorical points and tools to implicitly reinforce the boundary between White non-citizens who can be assimilated into the term “American” and non-White non-citizens who cannot be. Naturally, “American” can describe anyone of any race or ethnic background, and yet, the rhetoric surrounding both cases, when examined together, put forth quite a different perception. 

Riley and Zarutska deserved justice. They were precious members of their communities, and they should be alive.The crimes that took their lives should be seen as horrifying, not because Riley and Iryna’s deaths have become a platform to preach racist and xenophobic ideologies, but because Riley and Iryna were human beings. There is no justice in laws that fail to address the root causes of the crimes that killed them and instead that reify xenophobia and racialized fearmongering. Hence, interpreting the legislation that emerged from both of their deaths as anything other than performative politics that rely on fear and prejudice to signal increased public safety is troublesome. 

Nevertheless, there are certainly lessons that remain in the void left by Riley’s and Zarutska’s absences. The U.S. must not squander the opportunity for radical reformation of the American criminal legal system that prioritizes funding for and deep, comprehensive thought about addressing those with mental health needs or who are unhoused. Further, the American public must not surrender to narratives and fear that portray the undocumented, non-citizens, and people of color, as anything other than everyday people trying to survive and pursue stability and happiness. One’s violence is a reflection of them and the way in which they’ve dealt with the environment, context, and social norms around them, not of their race, gender, sexuality, religion, or any other identifier. As shared by their loved ones, Riley and Zarutska were loving young women who wanted to help others; part of seeking justice for them, then, is embodying their character and resisting the path of grasping onto fear, intolerance, and hostility.

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Glossary 

• Deservingness theory: A sociological concept that inquires about how people decide who is worthy of receiving resources or support. This concept is usually used to discuss social welfare resources. 

• DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion): A framework that aims to create organizations, systems, and more broadly a society, that is inclusive of diverse backgrounds (racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, socioeconomic background, age, disability, etc.) and provides fair opportunities for all. It does not just apply to minorities but is intended to serve and support all marginalized groups and identities.  

• Non-citizen: Any individual who is not a citizen or national of the country in which they reside in. This may include immigrants, refugees, asylees, and permanent residents. 

• Racialization: A sociological concept that refers to the process of associating certain meanings, characteristics, and behaviors to a group of people or racial category based on real or imagined features. This process is usually done to justify perpetuated inequality. 

• Rhetoric: Refers to language that is deliberately chosen with the aim of convincing or influencing people. 

• Undocumented (immigrant): Any non-citizen who does not have the necessary official documents to be considered as having permission to live, work, or stay in a country under the applicable law(s). Such documents may include a visa, residence permit, work permit. 

• Xenophobia: Prejudice against those from other countries than one’s own or against those perceived as foreign which may often result in hostility or violence.

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References

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