Her name is Lola Daviet and last Friday she never made it home from school. Her parents are the superintendents in the building so her father was able to pull up security video showing her with another young woman. Her mother put up a post on Facebook saying she may have been abducted. A few hours later her body was found inside a plastic container. She had been murdered.

The principal suspect was allegedly caught on CCTV either accompanying or following Lola into the apartment building where the girl lived at about 3.30pm on Friday a few minutes after she left school. The woman was later seen by local people pushing a large plastic suitcase around the area.

The suitcase was left outside an apartment block not far from the building in the 19th arrondissement where Lola lived with her parents, Delphine and Johan, who were the building’s caretakers. It was discovered by a homeless man on Friday evening. An autopsy carried out on Saturday found wounds to the throat; the public prosecutor’s office reported that the girl had been asphyxiated.

The next day the suspect was arrested. And here’s where the story really blew up. The 24-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of Lola’s rape and murder was an Algerian immigrant named Dahbia B. She had entered the country legally on a student Visa in 2016 but had overstayed it and been ordered to leave the country in August.

A 24-year-old woman has been remanded in custody on suspicion of murder, rape as well as acts of torture.

It has also emerged she is an Algerian immigrant under orders to leave France…

She was initially stopped at a French airport on 20 August because her residence permit had run out. She had entered France legally as a student six years ago. Dahbia B was told to leave French territory within a month, under an order known as an OQTF (obligation de quitter le territoire français).

Although some orders are more immediate, Dahbia B had no criminal record so she was not placed in detention. OQTF orders are notorious because only one in 10 are observed, and Algerians are among the nationalities considered most likely to abuse the system.

In other words, some pointless administrative action was taken which everyone knows usually results in nothing. And in this case that’s what happened. Dahbia B was apparently living on the street and would sometimes stay with her older sister who lived in the same building as Lola and her parents. The sister’s apartment is believed to be the scene of the crime.

Frequently when there’s a mass shooting in the US, especially one involving children, you have activists on the left who immediately want to start beating the drum for gun control and conservatives who accuse the left of trying to profit politically off murder. Can’t we wait a day before this becomes political is a frequent refrain.

In France the party labels are reversed but the drama is the same. It’s figures on the right who are demanding to have an immediate national conversation about immigration over this case and those on the left who are accusing them of politicizing a tragedy and using a child’s coffin as a stepping stone.

Right-wing and far-right politicians assailed the government for being too lax on immigration and accused it of being partly responsible for the killing because of its failure to effectively deport people who have been ordered to leave the country.

Marine Le Pen, the staunchly anti-immigrant far-right leader, was one of several politicians who berated the government in Parliament on Tuesday, calling Lola’s murder “one too many.”

“The suspect in this barbaric act should not have been on our territory,” she said in a tirade against Élisabeth Borne, the prime minister. “Too many crimes and offenses are committed by illegal immigrants that we have not been willing or able to send back home.”

Ms. Borne shot back that Ms. Le Pen lacked “decency,” as she and other ministers accused the right and the far-right of exploiting the murder for political benefit. Éric Dupond-Moretti, the French justice minister, told lawmakers that “using a 12-year-old kid’s coffin like you would a stepping stool” was “shameful.”…

The smaller and even more virulently anti-immigrant party of Éric Zemmour, a far-right pundit and former presidential candidate, is organizing a separate rally.

Mr. Zemmour has been particularly vocal about Lola’s murder on Twitter, where on Wednesday he asked “when will we defend our children” against attacks that he said were “always committed by the same people, always at the expense of the same people.”

Zemmour labeled the killing “Francocide” suggesting it was the targeting of a French person, but at this point there’s no clear motive for the attack. The BBC reported there may have been a conflict between Dahbia and the girl’s mother:

One potential motive cited by sources close to the investigation is a dispute between the main suspect and Lola’s mother. Dahbia B had been living in the same building with her sister but when she asked for a pass to enter the block of flats Lola’s mother refused.

The other possibility is that there was no real motive and that Dahbia just has serious mental problems (which may also explain why she’s living on the street).

Dahbia B suffers from “extreme psychological problems”, an investigating source was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying.

We’ll hopefully learn more about what motivated this crime as Dahbia B heads to trial.