A farmworker was found guilty of first-degree murder on Friday in the fatal stabbing of a University of Iowa student who had vanished while jogging in 2018, a case that briefly inflamed the national debate over immigration. Jurors convicted the farmworker, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, in the killing of the student, Mollie Tibbetts, 20, whose body was found after a monthlong search, hidden under corn leaves in a field outside Brooklyn, Iowa, her hometown. Mr. Bahena Rivera, 26, who had led the authorities to Ms. Tibbetts’s body and who was found to have Ms. Tibbetts’s blood in the trunk of his car, could be sentenced to life in prison without parole when he is sentenced on July 15. During the 2018 midterm elections, President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans seized on the arrest of Mr. Bahena Rivera, who had been described by the authorities as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, to rail against illegal immigration and push for tougher laws and the construction of a border wall.

Source: New York Times May 28, 2021 21:45 UTC