Man pleads guilty to Michigan killing that stoked anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A Mexican national who is in the U.S. illegally has pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend and dumping her body along a Michigan freeway. Twenty-five-year-old Brandon Ortiz Vite entered the plea in a Grand Rapids courtroom and is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 31. His girlfriend, Ruby Garcia, was found shot to death on the side of a highway in March. The case became a political flashpoint in April when former President Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of failing to keep him out of the country. Ortiz Vite had been deported in 2020. However, It’s unknown whether he returned during the last year of the Trump administration or during the Biden administration.