BUT DON'T YOU DARE POLITICIZE A SCHOOL SHOOTING (updated)

As I predicted:

Authorities in Iowa filed charges against an undocumented immigrant in connection with a recovered body believed to be that of 20-year-old University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, who disappeared from her home a month ago.

The state of play: Former Speaker Newt Gingrich emailed Axios' Mike Allen to make sure that we'd be covering this story, which Fox News led with on air and online Tuesday evening, ahead of the Cohen-Manafort news. His take: "If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble. If we can be blocked by Manafort-Cohen, etc., then GOP could lose [the House] badly."

"We are living in two alternative political universes. In one, Manafort-Cohen is dispositive. In the other, illegal immigrants killing Mollie Tibbetts is dispositive."

And it's not just Gingrich. There's also this racist Facebook rant from the Daily Caller's Benny Johnson:

Mollie went for a run on one of those sleepy Iowa farm roads I grew up on. She was abducted, murdered & had her body dumped in a ditch by a third-world monster who should have never been within a thousand miles of Mollie. This human garbage had spent six years (!) in our country illegally being shielded, protected & humanized at every turn by the policies of national Democrats. This bastard crossed our borders illegally and even though he does not share our culture, worldview or value system he was allowed to stay long enough to murder an American in the prime of her life & leave her body in the dirt for 34 days.

How is it possible that the sub-human horror of the third-world can find its way to the peaceful farm communities of my upbringing?

It bears repeating: Democrats & open-borders advocates have the blood of Mollie Tibbetts on their hands. The disgraceful policies of sanctuary cities, catch-and-release & open borders have led to American bloodshed.

The Des Moines Register reports that the man in custody, Cristhian Rivera, worked for four years at a farm owned by the brother of a prominent Iowa Republican. But apart from that, in what way is this a "third-world" crime? What evidence is there that Rivera "does not share our culture, worldview or value system"?

Two days ago, a Colorado man named Chris Watts was charged with killing his pregnant wife and two young daughters and disposing of their bodies. He's admitted to strangling his wife, although he claims it was because he'd become infuriated watching her strangle one of the children. Previously, however, he'd said that he had no idea where his wife was.

Watts was born and raised in North Carolina.

If you want to put a serious dent in America's violent crime rate, ban men, not immigrants.

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UPDATE: Well, actually...

The government is incorrectly promoting the idea that Rivera is not in Iowa legally, attorney Allen Richards of Tama said in a court document asking for a gag order in the case....

Rivera has lived in Iowa for four to seven years, working at Yarrabee Farms, a Brooklyn-area farm owned by Eric Lang, the brother of Craig Lang, a prominent Republican.

Craig Lang has verified that Rivera is in Iowa legally, according to Richards’ motion.

Fox and the rest of the right-wing media will pretend not to notice this for a couple of days, then, assuming it's established as incontrovertible fact, quietly drop the subject of Tibbetts altogether -- or perhaps proclaim (as Trump administration has) that even legal immigrants are a menace.

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UPDATE: ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services say Rivera is not in the country legally, and the Lang family says Rivera passed an E-Verify check under a different name.