Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday pushed back on the assertion that President Joe Biden’s immigration policy is responsible for the death of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.
Riley was brutally murdered while out for a jog last month, with her body found in a wooded area near campus in Athens, Georgia.
Her alleged killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was in the United State illegally and had committed crimes in other states.
That fact has been a rallying cry for conservatives – including former President Donald Trump – who believe the Biden administration has mishandled the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
‘One individual is responsible for the murder and that is the murderer,’ Mayorkas said during an interview on Face the Nation Sunday.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday pushed back on the assertion that President Joe Biden ‘s immigration policy is responsible for the death of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley
22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley (left) was murdered last month while out jogging near her Athens, Georgia campus. Her alleged killer is Jose Antonio Ibarra (right), who came into the U.S. illegally in September 2022 and was arrested last September in New York
The embattled DHS secretary, who was impeached by the House of Representatives last month, called Riley’s death an ‘absolute tragedy,’ when asked by CBS’ Margaret Brennan if Ibarra should have been deported.
‘And our hearts break for and our prayers are with the family,’ Mayorkas said.
The DHS secretary said that his federal agency ‘work[s] very closely with state and local law enforcement to ensure that individuals who pose a threat to public safety are indeed our highest priority for detention and removal.’
She continued to prod about why that failed to happen in Ibarra’s case.
‘There are a number of cities around the country that have varying degrees of cooperation with the immigration authority,’ he answered.
‘We firmly believe that if a city is aware of an individual who poses a threat to public safety then we would request that they provide us with that information so that we can ensure that that individual is detained if the facts so warrant,’ Mayorkas added.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that the suspect had been arrested in September by the New York Police Department for ‘acting in a manner to injure a child.’
The NYPD did not confirm that part of the story, telling the local Fox affiliate there were no arrests on file for Ibarra.
U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement said that Ibarra entered the country illegally near El Paso, Texas in September 2022 and was released for further processing after being initially detained.
Brennan said it sounded like, in this case, the feds and New York City weren’t coordinating.
‘Well, cities have different levels of cooperation. We were not notified in this instance,’ hs said.