Bridges, not walls, writes slain Iowan’s father

The father of Mollie Tibbetts, an Iowa college student whose body was found last month, has called on others to not “callously distort and corrupt” her death to promote a political agenda, a day after President Donald Trump’s eldest son blamed Democrats for her death.

Since authorities announced on Aug. 22 that Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a farm worker from Mexico, was charged with first-degree murder in her death, politicians and pundits have used the arrest to push for stronger immigration laws.

In a column in The Des Moines Register on Saturday, her father, Rob Tibbetts, encouraged the debate on immigration. “But,” he added, “do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist.”

The Register on Friday published a column by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., in which he blamed Democrats for Tibbetts’ death and said claims that conservatives and Republicans were politicizing her death were “absurd.”

“The reaction from some Democrats and others on the left to the murder of Mollie Tibbetts is as despicable as it is revealing,” he said. “Unfortunately, Mollie was not the first casualty of the left’s love for open borders.”

In an email Sunday, Tibbetts said he initially wrote the column to rebut Trump’s claims and asked for the same decency that Vice President Mike Pence showed him and his family. Pence and his staff, he said, “have proven genuinely compassionate and humane.”

“I chose to call out the racists among us and ask people to aspire to higher American ideals,” he said.

In his column, Tibbetts apologized to the Hispanic community for being “beset by the circumstances of Mollie’s death.” Authorities have said that Rivera is from Mexico.

“The person who is accused of taking Mollie’s life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people,” Tibbetts wrote.

He urged readers to “turn toward each other with all the compassion we gave Mollie.”

“Let’s listen, not shout. Let’s build bridges, not walls,” he wrote. “We have the opportunity now to take heed of the lessons that Mollie, John McCain and Aretha Franklin taught — humanity, fairness and courage.”

Mollie Tibbetts, 20, was last seen while on a run in her hometown, Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18. Television crews swarmed the town as authorities searched for her and conducted hundreds of interviews. Surveillance video led them to Rivera, who they said later led them to her body.

It did not take long for politicians to seize on her killing and use it to promote their own platforms. On the day the discovery of her body was announced, Trump, in a rally in West Virginia, used her death as a talking point about the state of immigration laws. He has repeatedly linked crime to illegal immigration, despite studies that show otherwise.

Tibbetts said that on Saturday night, he and his family ate at a Mexican restaurant, and the owner told him that her staff had read what he wrote. They were grateful and relieved, he said.

“The manufactured cloud between us was gone and restored with mutual care and empathy,” Tibbetts said. “We can get our country back, but we have to call out the bully on the playground once and for all.”