The story of Laken Riley, the nursing student killed in February in Athens, Ga., is deeply tragic. And in this election year when politicians, the media, and members of the public regularly conflate race, crime, and immigration, the story of her death is being weaponized and twisted to suit cynical and dangerous political theater. Prosecutors charged a 26-year-old man, Jose Antonio Ibarra, in Ms. Riley's death. The authorities said he had migrated from Venezuela. Almost immediately many commentators and politicians threw aside any presumption of innocence and inserted the case into the broader debate around migration and policies of deterrence....