Nabra Hassanen was a Muslim teen with an infectious smile and a bright future, but her family is left heartbroken and full of questions after she was hunted down and beaten to death Sunday by an illegal alien from El Salvador.

The fact that her alleged assailant was in the country illegally is being downplayed or ignored by most major media outlets.

The story appeared nowhere on the front pages of Google News or Yahoo News Tuesday, and newspapers such as the Washington Post were more interested in why police refused to file hate-crime charges than in the immigration status of Nabra's killer.

"The media is only interested in these stories insofar as they fit their propaganda narrative," Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, told WND. "When it was clear that this one didn't, it was dropped. But if the attacker had been an American conservative, it would have been front-page news for a solid week or more."

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Police say 17-year-old Nabra was beaten with a baseball bat after she left the ADAMS Mosque in Sterling, Virginia, early Sunday with a group of friends. Her attacker was 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres, who was identified as an illegal alien subject to an ICE detainment order.

Fairfax County Police Spokesman Julie Parker said the case is being investigated not as a hate crime against Muslims but as an act of road rage.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is planning a series of candlelight vigils around the nation in honor of Nabra Tuesday night and at sunrise Wednesday.

"Nothing indicates that this was motivated by race or by religion. It appears the suspect became so enraged over this traffic argument that it escalated into deadly violence," Parker said at a police press conference.

The local NBC affiliate, WBAL-TV, reported on the case Tuesday without ever mentioning that Torres was an illegal alien from El Salvador.

Despite the police statement to the contrary, much of the American Muslim community continues to run with the anti-Muslim hate-crime narrative. Police said Torres became enraged while driving past a large group of Muslim teens, who perhaps had been walking in the roadway, and got out of his car with a baseball bat. The teens ran away but Torres was able to catch Nabra, Parker said. Torres then struck Nabra, placed her in his vehicle, and her body was found a short time later in a nearby pond.

Nabra's father, Mahmoud Hassanen, told the London Guardian he does not accept police accounts describing his daughter as a victim of road rage.

CAIR also criticized police on Tuesday for settling too soon on road rage as the motivator and said the killing should be seen in the context of a rise in hate crimes targeting Muslims across the country, the organization told the Washington Post.

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“We think it’s premature,” said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. “We believe these incidents are at the core motivated by the perception that these subjects are Muslim."

CAIR's Facebook page was filled Tuesday with comments about Nabra's death.

But nobody was talking about the fact that an illegal with obvious violent tendencies was allowed to stay in the country and live among people in Sterling, Virginia.

It's not surprising how quickly the story dropped off the news cycle when Torres was identified as an illegal immigrant, said Ann Corcoran, who posted a blog about the murder Tuesday at Refugee Resettlement Watch.

If Torres was an "Islamophobe" motivated by a hatred for Muslims, that only goes to show that Third Worlders are less tolerant than Americans and should not be brought here in large numbers with questionable, if any, vetting, said Corcoran.

"The left has this idea that the Salvadoran is going to get along with the Muslims and the Muslims are going to get along with the Chaldean Christians; and just because they're all immigrants, they're all going to love each other," she said. "After all, they're all coming here just for a better life, right? But that's not the reality.

"I bet they cringe when they see this sort of violence, because it doesn't fit their leftist meme at all."

William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, says the news coverage would have taken on a much different tone had the alleged killer not been a young illegal alien from Central America.

He said the media has an agenda to promote positive news about illegal-alien "DREAMers" like Torres, and anything negative that comes to light about them is quickly covered up or glossed over.

"The initial report that a young Muslim girl had been beaten to death quickly swept across social media as liberals posted it as an example of evil white males out to harm anyone they can," Gheen said. "As soon as it was revealed that it was a Hispanic illegal alien responsible for the crime, authorities quickly announced there would be no consideration of 'hate crimes' charges and the left dropped the story like a hot brick."

Because of the lack of media coverage, the government will not be held responsible for its mass-immigration policies, which includes not only illegals but unvettable "refugees" being invited to migrate legally from the Third World.

"The truth is that this young lady was murdered as a direct result of U.S. policy failures to enforce our existing immigration laws," Gheen said. "Every American life lost, personal injury, stolen election, property damage and theft case, identity theft case, and other damages caused by an illegal alien is the responsibility of every single lawmaker, organization and activist that supports the current unconstitutional suspension of our existing immigration laws. This policy of amnesty is facilitating the deadly illegal alien invasion and socialist overthrow of America."

Robert Spencer, author of the Jihad Watch blog, noted the incident was already being paired by CAIR with the Finsbury Park attack in the United Kingdom as examples of anti-Muslim hate crimes on the rise.

"If the attacker had been a white American, this would have been international news, trumpeted as proof of 'Islamophobia,'" Spencer said. "This incident was already being paired with the Finsbury Park Mosque attack in London as evidence of a wave of hatred against Muslims. That the attacker was a Hispanic mugger took all the wind out of the propagandists' sails."