President Joe Biden walked back his use of the term “illegal” to describe an undocumented immigrant on Saturday, telling MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart, “I shouldn’t have used illegal. It’s undocumented.”
Biden’s use of the label came in a testy back-and-forth with Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene during his State of the Union address. Greene arrived at the speech donning a t-shirt that read “Say Her Name,” a phrase that stems from protests over the police killings of Black women. Greene had repurposed the slogan to protest the recent murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Greene’s home state who was found dead in February.
An undocumented Venezuelan man has been charged in the murder, which has turned into a rallying point for hard-right conservatives, including former President Donald Trump, who is making unfounded claims of a “migrant crime” wave central to his 2024 bid.
Midway through Biden’s SOTU speech, Greene began to heckle, shouting, “What about Laken Riley? Say her name!” Biden then held up one of the buttons Greene had been handing out bearing Riley’s name. “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed,” he said, mispronouncing her first name. “By an illegal!” Green responded. Biden replied: “By an illegal, that’s right.”
The President proceeded to awkwardly ask, “But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?” appearing to make the point that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. The President then called on the Republicans in attendance to pass the bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate, which he described as the “toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen in this country.”
Biden’s off-the-cuff use of the term—which his own administration retired in 2021—immediately drew backlash from progressive Democrats and immigration advocates. “There was a lot of good in President Biden’s speech tonight, but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong,” Texas Representative Joaquin Castro posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Castro’s fellow member of the House Hispanic Caucus, California Representative Alex Padilla, told NBC on Friday that Biden’s “ad-lib last night was deeply disappointing,” adding that it was an example of “the type of dangerous rhetoric that [Biden] has denounced in the past and I expect that he will do so again.”
Despite the backlash, Biden didn’t walk back his use of the term when he was asked about it on Friday, telling a reporter that the man who allegedly killed Riley was “technically not supposed to be here.” It was only on Saturday that he admitted he regretted it, before attempting to draw a contrast with Trump on immigration.
“When I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood,” Biden said in his Saturday interview. “I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.”
On Saturday, Biden’s likely 2024 counterpart was campaigning in Georgia, where he appeared at a rally alongside Riley’s parents, sister and friends. “Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he told the crowd. “Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.”
Trump also took the opportunity to go after the Biden administration’s immigration policy, which he called “a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven.” Riley, he said, “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.”
