On Sunday, Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, attempted to mitigate the severity of an illegal murdering a young American student by stating it was merely one individual responsible for the death of a student from Georgia last month.
Republicans had previously connected the alleged suspect, a Venezuelan national, to the way the Biden administration dealt with the border.
Last month, the 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley was discovered dead at Augusta University’s Athens Campus. Her roommate had reported that Riley had gone for a run in the University of Georgia campus woods and never returned. A 26-year-old man named Jose Ibarra was subsequently taken into custody and faced murder charges related to her demise.
According to UCBP, Ibarra was apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (UCBP) in September 2022 while traveling from Mexico to El Paso, Texas, and then released for additional processing.
On Sunday, CBS “Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked Mayorkas if deporting Ibarra was the right decision in light of his alleged crimes committed after his release from detention. She instructed the DHS secretary whether the federal government had been made aware of Ibarra’s alleged prior transgressions in the United States and, if so, why he wasn’t deported.
Mayorkas said to her question about a possible system failure that several cities around the country have varying degrees of cooperation with immigration authorities. He said his agency firmly believes that any municipality that knows of a person who could endanger the public should contact Homeland Security to take appropriate action, such as detaining that person if the evidence so demands.
He said they were not notified in this instance.
Democrats have maintained that immigration and crime concerns should not be mixed up in response to efforts by former president Trump and his Republican associates to exploit Riley’s death as a weapon against Biden’s border security measures.
But there is a correlation. The border is not secure.
