The horrific murder of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University who was found dead Thursday on the campus of the University of Georgia, captures many Americans’ concerns around immigration. Her death raises important questions to which Riley’s family – and all Americans – deserve answers.
Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan national, stands accused of this heinous crime, having allegedly acted without any prior connection to Riley. The commonsense questions now are: How did he get here? Should he have been here at all?
Now let’s go beyond the obvious.
BIDEN WHITE HOUSE RESPONDS TO LAKEN RILEY MURDER ON UGA CAMPUS: ‘PEOPLE SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE’
Ibarra reportedly entered the United States at El Paso, Texas, in September 2022. But a question that remains around Ibarra’s presence in the United States is the issue of sponsorship. Under Biden-era immigration protocols, Venezuelan migrants can be “sponsored into” America by individuals or groups that are willing to take responsibility for the new arrivals.
According to reports, Ibarra provided Covenant House, a youth homeless shelter in New York City, as his sponsor to gain entry into the U.S.
But in an email exchange with this writer, the Executive Director of Covenant House wrote that,
Covenant House New York did not sponsor Jose Antonio Ibarra’s entry into the country and has not done so for any other person. We do not know how our address came to be on his form, but there have been and continue to be…
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