Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are demanding Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas explain why the suspect in the Laken Riley murder was paroled into the United States.
Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, was killed while on a morning run near the University of Georgia last week. Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, has been arrested and charged with Riley’s murder. Ibarra, 26, entered the U.S. in late 2022 and was released by authorities due to a lack of detention space.
The killing has sparked outrage at the federal government’s continued inaction on the border crisis and comes just one week after U.S. Border Patrol officials announced that agents apprehended over 6,400 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions in fiscal 2024.
“We are deeply saddened by this senseless and preventable act of violence, and we write today demanding answers about how Ibarra was allowed to enter and remain in the United States,” the group, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the top Judiciary Republican, wrote in a letter to Mayorkas.
The letter was signed by every GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
The group expressed concern with the Biden administration’s handling of parole matters, citing Ibarra’s case as evidence that the DHS cannot possibly make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
They requested a response from Mayorkas by March 8 with “a copy of the case file for Jose Antonio Ibarra, including the record showing what urgent humanitarian reason or significant public benefit justified the decision to grant him parole.”
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DHS representatives did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on the letter, which was sent the same day as a similar missive from Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee.
The GOP lawmakers requested Mayorkas provide information on how Ibarra was processed into the country and wrote that Riley’s killing “further underscores the Committee’s serious concerns about the security of our nation, and the potential for criminal aliens to take advantage of the glaring vulnerabilities created by the Biden administration’s open-border policies.”
