Most of the United States of America worried for weeks when Mollie Tibbetts disappeared and grieved when her body was found. Several of Tibbetts’s family members have spoken out. Unfortunately, in their bid to fight against politicizing Mollie’s death, they fanned the flames.

Not every child who goes missing gets the wall-to-wall cable new coverage as Mollie Tibbetts did. The family’s efforts were aided by the “Missing White Woman” syndrome written about by Victory Girls’ Kim Hirsch. Read her post here. Tibbetts was young, white and photogenic. Any one of us would have used the media also.

Cristhian Rivera has confessed to police that he met Mollie while she was jogging, and that she ended up dead in his trunk. He claims he doesn’t remember how she got there. That’s convenient. Rivera is an illegal immigrant and provided false documentation to his employer, as reported by “CNN.com:”

The man accused of pursuing and killing 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts had worked four years at an Iowa dairy farm based on false identification, his employer said Wednesday.

“What we learned in the last 24 hours is that our employee was not who he said he was,” said Dane Lang, the co-owner and manager of Yarrabee Farms.

That revelation came about an hour after the employee, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge for the killing of Tibbetts. His bond was set at $5 million and his next court hearing is scheduled for August 31.

For years, our elected officials have ignored the pleas of those in border states to secure the borders of our country. Today, illegal immigrants are hiding in plain sight in all 48 contiguous states. President Donald Trump was elected on cries of “Build the Wall.” Yet, some of Tibbetts’s family members claim the problem is not illegal immigration, and that Mollie would not want her death to be used for political motives.

This is from an article in “Jezebel.com:”

The death of 20-year-old Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts has become a grotesque bit of political theater for Donald Trump and the racist right, but members of Tibbetts’s family have spoken out against those seeking to exploit the tragedy.

“I don’t want Mollie’s memory to get lost amongst politics,” Billie Jo Calderwood, Tibbetts’s aunt, told CNN. She echoed the sentiment in a Facebook post earlier this week:

Please remember, Evil comes in EVERY color. Our family has been blessed to be surrounded by love, friendship and support throughout this entire ordeal by friends from all different nations and races. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Samantha Lucas, a second cousin, also told CNN she believes that Tibbetts “would not want this to be used as fuel against undocumented immigrants.”

Those of us who call for border security are racists.

Mollie Tibbetts’s cousin, Sandi Murphy Tibbetts, posted this little gem of third-wave feminist twaddle on “Facebook:”

No.

No, no and no.

Especially for those of you who did not know her in life, you do not get to usurp Mollie and her legacy for your racist, false narrative now that she is no longer with us. We hereby reclaim our Mollie.

Mollie was a young, intelligent, caring woman with a ready smile and a compassionate heart. So many across the state of Iowa and the entire country embraced her, and us, as we all searched and hoped for her safe return. It was not to be. Mollie was killed, and a man has been arrested and charged with her murder. Yes, that man is an immigrant to this country, with uncertainty as to his legal status. But it matters not. He could have been a citizen, born in this country; he could have been an older, white man from anywhere; he could have been a man from Mollie’s world. He is a man, whose path in life crossed that of Mollie’s life, with tragic results. He is a man who felt entitled to impose himself on Mollie’s life, without consequence. He is a man who, because of his sense of male entitlement, refused to allow Mollie the right to reject his advances – the right to her own autonomy. Mollie was murdered because a man denied her right to say no.

Our national discussion needs to be about the violence committed in our society, mostly by men, as seen by these grim statistics from the FBI:
• 89.5% of murders are committed by men.
• 98.9% of forcible rapes are committed by men.
• 80% of violence against families and children is committed by men.
• 85% of intimate partner violence is committed by men.

We must be willing to address the way we raise our boys and young men, so that violence is not a part of their response to this world. Like the recent murders of the Colorado family or the similarly tragic homicide of Kate Steinle, Mollie’s death is further example of the toxic masculinity that exists in our society.

Mollie’s murder is truly tragic and horrifically painful for all of us who knew and loved her, the extinguishing of a treasured spirit much too soon. It is not your right to exacerbate this grievous act by hijacking Mollie and all she believed with your racist fear-mongering. You do not get to use her murder to inaccurately promote your “permanently separated” hyperbole. You do not have permission to callously use this tragedy to demonize an entire population for the acts of one man.

No. We reclaim our Mollie.

Don’t blame the illegal immigrant. Blame all men.

I understand the family is grieving. I want to make this clear. You reclaim your Mollie. Don’t stand in the way of the rest of us reclaiming our country. Thanks, K, bye.

While we were discussing this post in our editorial meeting, Jennifer North, legal eagle, posited these thoughts:

It’s simple: if he wasn’t here, she wouldn’t be dead. Care about protecting women? Here’s one solution.

Don’t like that? Ok, let’s try your way: raise our boys better. Ok, but he wasn’t raised here, so what are you going to do about that? How about: don’t let him in!

Third: lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. Illegal entry makes it more likely/easier for them to immorally commit the next crime.

Fourth: letting them in with no repercussions breeds resentment for ALL immigrants. Backfire on your compassion. And that makes it worse; and now this position of dismissing the illegal part of the equation IS going to make everything worse. It is not irrelevant.

Yes, thank you, Jennifer.

In the past, Republicans, Libertarians, and those to the right of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have rolled over when called racists. No more. Lawbreakers breed lawbreakers.

We, citizens of the United States, love our borders and our men.