GOP Demands Info Over Illegal Accused in Laken Riley Murder

Republican committee chairmen Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Tom McClintock, R-Calif., sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday demanding information on the illegal migrant who stands accused of killing nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia.

Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary and McClintock, Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement chair, want documentation related to Jose Antonio Ibarra, who faces multiple murder and assault charges in the death of the 22-year-old Riley, who died from blunt force trauma while out for a run on the University of Georgia campus.

Ibarra and his brother, Diego Ibarra, entered the U.S. illegally from Venezuela in September 2022, then the “Biden Administration released Ibarra into the United States,” the letter stated.

Jose Ibarra was then arrested a little over a year later, on Sept. 14, 2023, by New York Police Department officers, charged with acting in a manner to injure a child less than age 17 and a motor vehicle license violation.

“Criminal aliens exploit vulnerabilities in our nation’s immigration system to the detriment of those in the United States,” Jordan and McClintock wrote. “The Biden Administration’s border and immigration policies only increase the likelihood that criminal aliens will successfully enter and remain in the U.S.”

Jordan and McClintock have given Mayorkas until March 12 to turn over Jose Ibarra’s case history, alien file, history of entries into the U.S. and whether “CBP officials were alerted to derogatory information about the alien and what questions were asked of the alien during the screening process.”

Riley, a nursing student at Augusta University, was found dead Thursday after a roommate reported she didn’t return from a morning run in a wooded area of the University of Georgia campus near its intramural fields. Riley attended Augusta’s Athens campus.

Diego Ibarra himself had been arrested three times by Athens (Ga.) law enforcement since entering the U.S., including for DUI and driving without a license. He was charged Friday for possessing a fraudulent U.S. permanent resident card, the Department of Justice announced, the same day his brother was charged with Riley’s murder.

Mayorkas was impeached by the Republican-led House earlier this month and faces a potential trial in the Senate. However, it’s expected that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will push for dismissal, which requires a simple majority in the Democrat-led Senate.