RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: In State of the Union, Biden burned by careless reference

During the State of the Union, there was a moment that was surreal. It was in the section of the speech where President Joe Biden talked about immigration.

In those 465 words, Biden aimed to do two things: make a pitch for reviving the bipartisan border security bill that Republicans recently scuttled and blame the whole debacle on former President Donald Trump. He accomplished both objectives.

Unfortunately, Biden also went off script and surrendered the narrative to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a right-wing cartoon figure who shouldn’t be taken seriously on immigration. She is not honest about the fact that the Peach State, which she represents, would shrivel up and rot without immigrant workers to pick all that valuable tree fruit. Greene likes to bash immigrants, but you will never hear a critical word from her about the employers who hire them. That’s how we can tell she’s not serious about fixing the problem.

Still, Greene is smart enough to know that Democrats are skittish about the fact that some of the migrants whom officials let into the country, with the requirement that they show up for a later court date, might instead commit violent crimes. So when Biden entered the House chamber to deliver the speech, Greene — wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap and a large red-and-white campaign button that read “Stop the Biden Border Crisis” — handed him another button with the name of Laken Riley.

Riley is the 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University who was recently killed while jogging on the University of Georgia campus. José Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, has been arrested and charged with several crimes, including felony murder, false imprisonment and kidnapping.

Conservatives are shamelessly exploiting the tragedy to advance their narrative of an “open border” in much the same way that liberals ghoulishly exploit school shootings to argue that America needs stricter gun laws.

Even so, Democrats don’t have to play along. Yet many of them will, if they’re afraid of how they’ll be perceived. In fact, for a liberal politician, the only thing worse than being seen as “soft on crime” is being seen as “soft on crimes committed by illegal immigrants.”

If Latinos, and other advocates of common-sense immigration reform, are looking for a champion of the undocumented, they should look right past Biden. The Democrat was an immigration restrictionist during his 36 years in the Senate, rode shotgun as vice president to Barack Obama (aka “the deporter in chief”), and spent the last three years as president breaking his campaign promises and photocopying much of the immigration enforcement playbook put together by his predecessor, Trump.

In fact, the Biden administration was sued last year by the American Civil Liberties Union over proposed changes in asylum procedures that the ACLU insisted were illegal. A federal judge agreed. The administration reversed course.

So when Greene heckled Biden by daring him to say “Laken Riley” during the State of the Union, of course the president caved. He didn’t need a lot of pushing. He wasn’t really listening to Greene. He was listening to the voice in his heart. That was Joe being Joe.

As has been reported, Biden has a coping mechanism for dealing with his stutter. He speaks quickly. The problem is that, at 81, when he speaks quickly, he slurs his words. He mumbles. He loses his train of thought. He did all of that during the State of the Union. He also mangled Laken Riley’s name, referring to her as “Lincoln Riley.”

But for me — and for many other Latinos who were watching at home — the bigger cringe moment came when Biden said glibly that Riley had been killed by “an illegal.”

An illegal what, Mr. President? Anyone who spends 35 minutes navigating the immigration debate — let alone the 35 years I’ve spent doing it — knows it’s bad form to use that adjective as a noun. Biden could have referred to Ibarra as an “undocumented immigrant.” I’d even be OK with “illegal immigrant.” But not just “an illegal.” That’s a no-no.

This isn’t just semantics. For the past 30 years, Democrats have railed against Republicans for demonizing and dehumanizing undocumented immigrants, even though this cohort contributes enormously to the U.S. economy by doing jobs shunned by Americans.

Now a Democratic president — who already has a spotty record on immigrants and refugees — is taking cues from Republican extremists and doing the same thing?

Keep it up, Joe. And before long, the phrase “Latinos for Biden” will be an oxymoron.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.