ATHENS, Ga. — U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spoke on Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan man accused of killing UGA student Laken Riley, during an interview with CBS on Sunday, stating ICE was never notified by local law enforcement about the suspect's prior run-ins with police.
Ibarra was charged on Feb. 23 with multiple crimes, including murder, related to the death of the 22-year-old nursing student on the UGA campus.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Ibarra and his wife unlawfully 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.
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 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.”
About a month after Ibarra’s arrest in New York, 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.
During his interview with CBS, Secretary Mayorkas insisted that immigration officials were never notified about either of Ibarra's run-ins with police.
A spokesperson with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department previously 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 in the instance of his Athens citation. In New York, there are sanctuary provisions within city law to limit the cooperation of NYPD and ICE.
"There are a number of cities around the country that have varying degrees of cooperation with the immigration authorities," Mayorkas explained, adding, "We firmly believe that if a city is aware of an individual who poses a threat to public safety, then we would request that they provide us with that information so that we can ensure that that individual is detained if the facts so warrant."
The secretary of homeland security chalked this lapse in communication to some cities having "different levels of cooperation."
Critics have accused Athens of being a sanctuary city -- a designation that often implies a community will not cooperate with the federal government to enforce immigration law. Mayor Kelly Girtz has insisted that is not an accurate depiction of Athens-Clarke County, though he has distinguished between policies enacted by the city-county government and carried out by the Athens-Clarke County Police Department and policies that may be in place with the elected offices of the district attorney and sheriff.
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” and "of all statuses" 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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