Federal authorities on Monday brought document fraud charges against Diego Ibarra, an illegal immigrant and brother of the man accused of killing a nursing student on a college campus in Georgia.
Diego Ibarra, 29 and Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, are both from Venezuela and were caught and released last year as part of a record surge of illegal immigrants.
Authorities said they stopped Diego Ibarra while looking for suspects in the death of Laken Hope Riley. Jose Ibarra now stands accused of murder.
But in confronting Diego Ibarra, police said he showed them a bogus green card, signifying permanent legal residency, as his identity. The card bore his name, but it was a fake.
Diego Ibarra snuck into the U.S. on April 30 and said he wanted to pursue an asylum claim. He was released and indicated he was going to live in New York to await asylum proceedings.
But he ended up in Athens, Georgia, and has already notched three arrests by the end of the year, including charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, shoplifting and failure to appear.
Jose Ibarra snuck into the U.S. in 2022 and was caught and released under the Biden administration’s expansive use of “parole” powers.
He, too, had a prior record with an arrest in New York last summer for “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17” and a driving infraction. New York authorities released him before federal deportation officers could place with the police a detainer, or request that he be turned over for deportation.
The brothers are part of a massive wave of Venezuelan illegal immigrants whom the Biden administration has welcomed into the U.S., and which is now troubling authorities with criminal behavior.
At least two suspects in the mob attack on New York City police officers last month are Venezuelan migrants who are associated with a Venezuelan gang that’s using the immigration system to infiltrate U.S. communities.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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