Recent actions by the Trump administration involving the deportation of Venezuelan gang members to a notorious maximum-security facility in El Salvador have raised discussions about whether the individual responsible for the death of Augusta University student Laken Riley might face a similar fate.
In November, a Georgia judge sentenced Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, to life imprisonment after finding him guilty on ten counts related to the murder of the 22-year-old nursing student. Ibarra, aged 27, had brutally attacked Riley during her jog on the University of Georgia campus, resulting in her death.
“I remain outraged that Jose Ibarra did not receive the death penalty in Georgia—Laken Riley deserved that form of justice,” Republican Georgia State Senator Colton Moore expressed to Fox News Digital. “This monster should endure suffering every single day for his crime. If transferring him to El Salvador’s notorious prison, where he can languish in his wretchedness, is on the table, I support it wholeheartedly. Should President Trump facilitate this, he will have my full endorsement.”
Moore added, however, that he has not “heard anything about Georgia relinquishing control of its state justice system or handing over prisoners like Ibarra to foreign authorities.”
In this photo provided by El Salvador’s presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on Sunday, March 16. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg recently ordered an immediate stop to the deportation efforts so he could have more time to consider if Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was illegal.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said in a March 12 analysis that “even if imprisonment in El Salvador does not strip incarcerated citizens of their status, it is still illegal under Trump’s own touted First Step Act.”
“Signed by Trump in 2018 during his first term, the law included changes in federal sentencing in addition to reforms intended to improve the conditions of those in federal prisons. The law mandates that the federal government place people in ‘a facility as close as practicable to the prisoner’s primary residence, and to the extent practicable, in a facility within 500 driving miles of that residence,’” Eisen wrote.
