Laken Riley’s Killer Should Have Gotten The Death Penalty

On Wednesday, Judge H. Patrick Haggard found Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, guilty of brutally murdering 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. Ibarra received life in prison without the possibility of parole, as requested by prosecutors.

Though some may commend the American legal system for this outcome, in truth this verdict represents a gross miscarriage of justice. The severity of the crime, coupled with the fact that the perpetrator is an illegal alien and the victim was an American citizen, demands the death penalty.

He violated our nation’s sovereignty by entering illegally, leeched off the public dole for years, and then brutally murdered an American citizen. His punishment? He gets to stay in this country for the rest of his life on the taxpayer’s dime. That’s not justice; that’s a true consummation of President Joe Biden’s immigration philosophy.

As Riley jogged in a wooded area near her school in February, Ibarra attacked her with the intent to rape her and, after she fought back, killed her before dumping her body in the woods. Police quickly identified him as a suspect and arrested him the day after Riley’s murder.

Despite the media’s best efforts to conceal it, the public learned that Ibarra entered the United States illegally in 2022 and had numerous run-ins with law enforcement before he attacked Riley. It was later revealed that Ibarra was associated with the notoriously violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — the same group that has forcibly seized several apartment complexes in Colorado.

What happened next illustrates the catastrophic failure of our country’s policies toward the border and illegal aliens.

Border Patrol agents apprehended him when he initially crossed the border but let him go so that he could pursue his asylum claim. He went to New York, where police charged him with “reckless endangerment of a child and acting in a manner injurious to a child” in August 2023, yet he remained in the country. Ibarra then traveled down to Georgia aboard a free flight funded by taxpayer dollars courtesy of the Biden-Harris administration. Despite evidence of Ibarra’s lawlessness and ample opportunities to do so, no one stepped in at any point to eject this criminal from our country.

Ibarra isn’t the only guilty party in Riley’s death. Local authorities who fostered sanctuary city policies and the Biden-Harris administration that facilitated a full-scale invasion on the southern border deserve plenty of blame for this tragedy.

The district attorney for Athens-Clarke and Oconee Counties, Deborah Gonzalez, chose to pursue life without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty because it already constitutes a “very substantial punishment.” Gonzalez has also promised to take into account “the collateral consequences to undocumented defendants” when bringing charges and has operated in line with local officials’ sanctuary policies that help illegals like Ibarra evade deportation.

The Athens City Council previously passed a resolution welcoming illegal aliens in 2019 and reiterated that sentiment in a 2023 statement. The Athens-Clarke County sheriff’s office will not enforce a 48-hour detainer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a federal warrant or court order.

Gonzalez, elected in 2020 with backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros, lost her reelection bid to independent candidate Kalki Yalamanchili two weeks ago.

Thankfully, the Biden-Harris administration is on its way out after its own electoral humiliation. But had it enforced the bare minimum in border security, Ibarra — along with millions of other illegals — would never have made it into the country to begin with. Former President Bill Clinton admitted as much while on the campaign trail for Harris in October.

“You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you? They made an ad about it, about a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said.

Nothing can better illustrate the contrast between how the federal government reveres illegal aliens and how it disregards its own citizens than President Joe Biden’s interaction with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., over the murder.

After Greene demanded that Biden say Riley’s name, Biden called Ibarra an “illegal.” In the same exchange, he called Lake Riley “Lincoln Riley.” Soon after, the man who couldn’t even get a murdered American’s name right begged forgiveness for using the correct term for Ibarra.

Ibarra will join thousands of other noncitizens in our federal prisons. The Government Accountability Office estimated noncitizens accounted for 15 percent of the federal prison population in 2022. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that 21,504 noncitizens were sentenced in the federal system in fiscal year 2023, representing a third of “all individuals sentenced in fiscal year 2023.” Of those 21,504 noncitizens, 88.4 percent were illegal aliens and more than half had prior criminal history.

Ibarra shouldn’t languish in an American prison, and his association with the Tren de Aragua gang as well as Venezuela’s well-known corruption makes sending him back there to serve his sentence a dubious proposition at best. Therefore, the death penalty represents the most practical way to dispense justice on this monster.

But it’s not just about practicality and saving money: It’s also about our honor as a nation. We must prove that we value the safety of our citizens over the supposed plight of violent alien criminals. We must show that American justice will bring swift retribution to those who prey upon our citizens. And we must recognize that some crimes are so heinous and so harmful to the maintenance of a civilized society that death is the most appropriate sentence.

Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel