Venezuelan immigrant José Antonio Ibarra was indicted on Tuesday for the killing of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia in February, a case that gained national attention as Republicans across the country highlighted the fact that the accused was in the country unlawfully.
Concretely, Ibarra faces 10 charges, among them felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape, NBC News reported.
Riley, a nursing student at the Augusta University College of Nursing, disappeared after going for a jog on February 22. She was later found dead as a result of "blunt force trauma," police said.
University Police Chief Jeff Clark said that it didn't look like Ibarra new Riley and that the killing was a "crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened."
Ibarra's status as an undocumented migrant was a salient factor in the case, with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump using it to criticize president Joe Biden's border policies.
"Crooked Joe Biden's Border INVASION is destroying our country and killing our citizens! The horrible murder of 22-year-old Laken Riley at the University of Georgia should have NEVER happened!" wrote Trump in his social media site, Truth Social.
Moreover, state Republicans introduced shortly after a bill requiring, among other things, that all people taken to a jail in the state have their migratory status checked.
Governor Brian Kemp said that the bill "became one of our top priorities following the senseless death of Laken Riley at the hands of someone in this country illegally who had already been arrested even after crossing the border." The bill was approved by the Georgia legislature and signed into law earlier this month.
"If you enter our country illegally and proceed to commit further crime in our communities, we will not allow your crimes to go unanswered," Kemp added at the bill signing event. According to HB1105, sheriff's offices face losing state funding if they don't comply with the bill.
Advocates say the law will improve public safety, while detractors warn it could further erode trust between law enforcement and the state's large Latino community.
Latinos in the state were quick to condemn the murder but also pledged against anti Hispanic and anti immigrant rhetoric, with some saying they saw an uptick following the case. Nationality or immigration status "should not be used to make generalizations, assumptions, or accusations about large groups of people," said the Latino Community Fund Georgia.
Riley's father, on his end, said in March that he feared Ibarra's immigration status could mean some using the murder with political purposes. "It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they're just using my daughter's name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel," Jason Riley told NBC News in March.
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