The illegal immigrant suspected of murdering a Georgia nursing student late last week had previously been arrested and released by the New York Police Department last fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Sunday.
NYPD officers arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old immigrant from Venezuela, on September 14 over charges related to actions harming a child under the age of 17 and a motor-vehicle license violation, ICE said in a statement. At the time, he was released before ICE could issue a detainer.
However, the NYPD said it has no record of Ibarra’s arrest.
“There are no arrests on file for the individual in 2023,” a spokesperson told National Review.
New York City is a sanctuary city, meaning local law enforcement isn’t required by law to comply with an ICE detainer or cooperate with federal immigration officials. In 2014, city lawmakers passed legislation barring the NYPD or the Department of Correction from honoring “detainer requests” made by ICE. An immigration detainer is used to keep a suspect in custody until the person can be transferred to ICE for deportation purposes.
Ibarra illegally crossed into El Paso, Texas, in September 2022 and was released on parole by Customs and Border Protection shortly thereafter, ICE added.
An ICE field office in Atlanta, Ga., currently has a detainer on Ibarra, who was arrested Friday for the Thursday murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus.
The UGA Police Department charged the Venezuelan national with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, hindering a 911 call, and concealing the death of another. Ibarra neither attended UGA as a student nor knew the victim, authorities said Friday.
A judge presiding over the case denied his bail bond over the weekend, keeping him in prison. The suspect made his first court appearance related to the murder on Saturday.
Riley, who studied nursing at Augusta University on its campus in Athens, Ga., was found dead near a lake at UGA mid-day Thursday with “visible injuries,” UGA police chief Jeff Clark told reporters. Officers located her body after a concerned friend called the police when she didn’t return from a run in the area.
Riley graduated from UGA in 2023 and continued her education at Augusta’s College of Nursing in Athens, where both schools are located.
On Friday, the Department of Justice arrested and charged Ibarra’s 29-year-old brother, Diego Ibarra, over his possession of a fake green card. According to the DOJ, the elder brother has been arrested multiple times in Athens. Notably, he briefly worked at UGA as a dining-hall dishwasher starting February 6. He has since been fired after having failed to submit further documentation for the temporary position, a university spokesman said.