ATHENS, Ga. — The death of a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student is propelling the national conversation about immigration into the spotlight. As investigators work to learn how Laken Riley died, others are looking into how her accused killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, made it to Athens.
11Alive Investigates built a timeline to determine if current immigration policies would have impacted Ibarra's ability to travel to Athens, where he is accused of killing Riley on the University of Georgia campus.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ibarra and his wife entered the United States near El Paso, Texas, in September 2022. After being arrested and released, his wife told the New York Post they were put on a bus and sent to New York.
At that time, immigration attorney Pamela Peynado said Venezuelans had special protective status in the U.S.
“It could be political unrest, it could be a national disaster," she said, "but we're basically allowing these individuals to stay here for a temporary amount of time because it's unsafe to send them back to their home country."
Ibarra’s wife told the New York Post he was making food deliveries about a year later when police in Queens, New York, arrested him for endangering her 5-year-old son. He who was riding on the back of the moped without a helmet, according to reporting by the outlet.
At that point Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could have taken Ibarra into custody, but according to a written ICE statement, “he was released by the NYPD before a detainer could be issued.”
11Alive Investigates reached out to the district attorney’s office in Queens to get more context on the case, but the assistant DA associated with the case refused to answer questions and its communications department denied having any information about it.
By that time, Ibarra’s brother Diego was living in Athens. It was only about a month after Ibarra’s arrest in New York that he and his brother were accused of stealing from a Walmart in Athens.
According to the police report, the two allegedly took bacon, smoked sausage, queso fresco cheese and some clothes. They were given a citation for misdemeanor shoplifting and let go.
A spokesperson with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department said:
“Our officers do not have immediate access to immigration status…. According to ICE’s 287(g) program, the general process of identifying and removing non-citizens with criminal or pending charges arrested by state and local law enforcement agencies is handled during the booking process by the law enforcement agency responsible for the jail.”
Since Ibarra wasn’t arrested, that check wasn’t done.
But, Ibarra’s brother Diego had been arrested the month before on a DUI charge.
The Clarke County Sheriff’s Office sent its policy on its communication with ICE. It indicated that “prisoners identified as undocumented aliens should not be detained solely on the basis of being an undocumented alien” but that otherwise, ICE would be notified, and it would be up to ICE to determine whether to request custody.
It's unclear if that communication occurred.
The sheriff’s office has yet to respond to a request for clarification, but the Department of Justice says it was unaware of Diego Ibarra’s prior arrest history until last week.
While critics have pointed to Athens as a sanctuary city -- a designation that often implies a community will not cooperate with the federal government to enforce immigration law -- Mayor Kelly Girtz insisted that is not an accurate depiction of Athens-Clarke County.
In a report put together to address a community question on the issue at a town hall last December, the city pointed to a resolution passed in 2019 to express its interest in being “welcoming to people from all backgrounds” but that the resolution did not “prohibit or restrict local officials… from cooperating with federal official or law enforcement officers with regard to reporting immigration status information.”
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