Jose Ibarra, a citizen of Venezuela and a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, entered the U.S. illegally at El Paso in 2022. Ibarra was apprehended by ICE, but in keeping with Biden Administration policy, he was “paroled and released for further processing.” In other words, he was let go and was on his own inside the U.S.
Ibarra made his way to New York City; I don’t know how. He was put up at taxpayer expense at the Roosevelt Hotel, a formerly rather luxurious midtown hotel where I stayed at least once when in New York on business, but is now devoted solely to illegal aliens.
Ibarra committed a crime in New York and was arrested. It has come out in his murder trial that, rather than being punished or deported, he enjoyed a taxpayer-funded flight from New York to Athens, Georgia, his destination of choice. This, once again, followed Biden Administration policy.
On February 22, 2024, at a little before 9:00 in the morning, 22-year-old Laken Riley, a nursing student, went for a run on the campus of the University of Georgia. You would think that would be a safe thing to do, and it normally would be. But on this day, illegal alien Jose Ibarra was lying in wait for a rape victim.
Ibarra saw Riley and attacked her. The evidence in Ibarra’s trial indicates that she defended herself heroically, fighting him off for as much as 18 minutes. Frustrated, he bashed in her skull with a rock. But Riley’s fight was not entirely in vain: it resulted in DNA and other physical evidence that helped to lock in the case against Ibarra.
Ibarra is now on trial in Athens, but not before a jury. He waived his right to a jury, and the case is proceeding before a local judge. Ibarra and his lawyers could pretty well predict what a jury would do to him.
Nor is it just prospective jurors: every sane American must be appalled by the Biden Administration policies that welcomed an illegal alien, a Venezuelan gang member, into the U.S.; disabled ICE from kicking him out, after he was apprehended; allowed him to roam freely within our country; and bought him a plane ticket to the destination of his choice, Athens, Georgia. In a sense, it is hard to blame Jose Ibarra for thinking he could get away with anything, and the crazy American authorities would only reward him.
Kamala Harris, Biden’s laughable “border czar,” would have continued these disastrous illegal immigration policies. Many factors contributed to Harris’s decisive defeat, but her identification with Biden’s anti-American immigration policies may have been the most important.
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