Laken Riley's murder — here's how many people have been killed by immigrants under Joe Biden
The information is nearly impossible to track
Laken Hope Riley almost never went a day without going on a run. She ran nearly all of her life, and she was good at it too.
In high school, Riley made the varsity cross-country team as a sophomore. She continued to run in college while attending the University of Georgia (UGA). According to her freshman year roommate, it was “very rare” for Riley to miss a day of running. “She would go on runs every single day,” her roommate said.
Even after transferring to nearby Augusta University last year, Riley kept going on runs on the University of Georgia campus. That’s exactly how Riley began her morning on February 22nd. Except after this run, Riley never returned home.
Riley’s roommate reported her missing just after noon, hours after Riley had left on her run. It only took authorities 30 minutes to find Riley’s body unconscious, near UGA’s intramural fields. Emergency responders quickly determined that Laken Riley was dead. She was just 22-years-old.
But it was also evident that Riley didn’t just die. She had been brutally murdered.
The next day, UGA police found and arrested her killer, a 26-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant named Jose Ibarra.
According to the coroner’s report, Riley died of blunt force trauma to the head. According to the arrest affidavit, Ibarra killed Riley by “disfiguring her skull.” The affidavit also suggests Riley attempted to fight back, and call 911. Ibarra “physically” prevented her from doing so.
In a just society, Jose Ibarra’s fate would be the same as Riley’s. In a sane society, Ibarra would’ve been deported as soon as he crossed into the country illegally.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) previously arrested Ibarra in September, 2022 after he illegally crossed into the country near El Paso, Texas. But like millions of other illegals who have crossed the southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency, CBP released Ibarra onto the streets until his immigration case could be reviewed.
Ibarra was also arrested last year in New York City for injuring a minor child. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have since accused the NYPD of releasing Ibarra before he could be detained. But the NYPD says they have no record of ever arresting Ibarra.
Sadly, thanks to the Biden administration’s open border policies, Riley’s murder is not an anomaly. It’s not even the only such story—a violent crime committed by an illegal immigrant—this month.
A few weeks ago, 25-year-old illegal immigrant Nilson Noel Trejo-Granados shot and killed a 2-year-old toddler in Langley Park, Maryland. Last month, a 19-year-old illegal immigrant from Honduras raped a 14-year-old at knifepoint. He also repeatedly stabbed a man during a robbery a few days later. And, just days after UGA police arrested Ibarra, authorities in Virginia arrested a 32-year-old Venezuelan illegal immigrant for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.
These are just a few examples.
How many people have been murdered by (illegal) immigrants?
After Laken Riley’s murder, I began to wonder how many other innocent Americans had suffered her same fate. Not surprisingly, “deaths by illegals” is not a stat the federal government tracks or cares to monitor. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas dodged the question entirely at a House Appropriations hearing last year.
Most states don’t track immigrant crimes either, and not because it would be difficult to do so. Texas, to its credit, tracks these crimes through the state’s Department of Public Safety. Every other Republican legislature and governor could do the same; they could immediately push for laws that mandate the recording of citizenship status during arrests, and among the prison population.
It’s clearly by design that crimes committed by illegals, and really immigrants in general, are kept secret. None of that means we can’t at least attempt to estimate the figure.
Tracking the numbers
Unable to use data from the federal government, I turned to a few other sources. First, I scoured any news report I could find. This wasn’t exactly foolproof; news outlets routinely omit immigration status when reporting on suspects. So I was only able to count murders and homicides where the suspect’s immigration status was clear.
I also used reports from The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Illegal Alien Report, and Breitbart. Each of these do a good job of trying to track crime committed by immigrants, though each outlet’s count is understandably incomplete.
Here’s what I found:
104 people killed by immigrants during Biden’s presidency
30+ additional alleged immigrant murderers that I could not verify
You can read the full list and each example, here.
Why the number is likely an undercount
As previously mentioned, there is no federal government count of crimes committed by immigrants. However, I still attempted to cross reference my figure with other statistics the federal government collects.
According to CBP, since fiscal year 2020 there have been 168 illegal immigrants convicted of homicide or manslaughter. In fiscal year 2021, Biden’s first full fiscal year in office, there was a 1,900% increase in such convictions compared to the year prior. Trump averaged about three homicide/manslaughter convictions a year while in office. Biden is averaging over 40.
These convictions don’t necessarily align with the number of dead, since convictions lag the actual date of the crime. CBP’s numbers also don’t reflect the year the homicide or manslaughter was committed.
Like CBP, ICE does not track top-line immigrant homicide or manslaughter statistics. The agency does, however, track noncitizen arrest records and convictions. In FY 2023, ICE arrested 1,713 noncitizens who had homicide convictions or pending homicide charges. In FY 2022, that number was 1,501. FY 2021 was nearly identical, with 1,506 such arrests.
At first glance, this suggests that there were more than a thousand murders committed by legal and illegal immigrants in each of those respective years. There very well may have been, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. ICE says it merely counts the criminal charges or convictions on an immigrant’s record at the time of their arrest. A spokesperson for ICE told me the agency does not actively keep a tally of the dates of homicide charges and convictions.
Still, if ICE is arresting 1,500+ immigrants a year with homicide convictions on their records, it does seem there is a disconnect when media reports only tally around 100 such cases over a three year span.
This suggests the discrepancy is due to one of two things. Either there is a significant multiyear delay between ICE arrests and the dates the crimes were committed, or the media are covering up immigrant crime. There is no other explanation, at least that I could think of, to justify why ICE has arrested nearly 5,000 migrants with homicide convictions or charges in the last three years, but media reports only tally about a 100 such murders by immigrants.
Additionally, if you believe it takes ICE several years to arrest immigrants convicted or charged with homicide, you would have to believe that there are thousands of murderers who have spent years evading arrest. It’s possible, but not likely. Is ICE allowing immigrants with homicide convictions or charges to roam our streets for several years before arrest?
The other possibility, that the media cover up immigrant crime, is more likely. Outlets often omit citizenship status when reporting about murders. Or, as in the case of Laken Riley, they side and sympathize with the violent immigrant criminal.
Media, politicians rush to hide illegal immigrant crime
In its initial report on Riley’s death, CNN buried the fact that Ibarra was an illegal. The authors inserted a throwaway line about the feds charging Ibarra’s brother with possessing a stolen green card 15 paragraphs into their story. That half-assed mention was still more accurate than the Associated Press, which falsely referred to Ibarra as an “Athens resident.” The outlet also made no mention of Ibarra’s immigration status.
That seems to be a common tactic of the media. I found similar terminology in dozens of news articles while investigating the number of people killed by immigrants under Biden. Not only do the media falsely label these individuals as a “resident of” or “[insert city here] man,” but they also refuse to report on citizenship status.
Because Ibarra’s immigration status was apparently not relevant to the Associated Press, the outlet instead reported that Riley’s murder “highlights the fears of solo female athletes.” Even the usually conservative-leaning New York Post ran a headline implying that Ibarra was the real victim, since he only killed Riley because he “panicked.”
The Atlantic Journal Chronicle went further, with this absurd headline: ‘Not fair’: After UGA killing, Venezuelans in Georgia worry about backlash. Because, of course, the real victims here are the Venezuelans who’ve been granted free entry into the country under Joe Biden.
Athens Mayor Kelly Girtz was even more sympathetic than the media. At a press conference today, he defended Athens’ designation as a sanctuary city. He also scolded Georgians for connecting immigration and crime, declaring that the two “are not connected.”
This reaction is the norm among most politicians, especially in the Democratic Party. Even after a heinous murder, Democrats like Kelly Girtz believe it is their responsibility to defend unfettered immigration. There’s an effort to control the reaction of the American public to these heinous violent crimes.
Methodology
The cases I included in the list are limited to homicide, manslaughter, or vehicular manslaughter cases only—basically cases where someone was left dead. Keep in mind that illegal immigrants are also responsible for a variety of other violent crimes too, like rape and sexual assault for example. This list also excludes Americans killed by fentanyl (more than 70,000 in 2022), even though the border policies are directly responsible for those deaths since fentanyl smuggled into the United States is brought through southern the border, whether illegally or at a port of entry. Last year, the California National Guard seized enough fentanyl in the state to kill everyone in the world two times over.
The numbers also don’t necessarily differentiate between illegal or legal immigrants. The Biden administration has expanded the definition of what constitutes a legal immigrant by expanding Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for many immigrant groups, and by creating a brand new parole program that allows 30,000 Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians to enter the United States. While these immigrants may technically be legal, their profiles, journeys, and admissions into the United States are often similar to those of immigrants who simply cross the southern border and turn themselves in to CBP. The point is, the Biden administration has made it easier for millions of immigrants with unknown backgrounds to enter the United States. Any crime they commit, regardless of whether they’re here legally or illegally, is a preventable crime.
Lastly, instead of defining each victim as an American, the count is simply the number of people who have been killed by immigrants. It’s more accurate to tally the numbers that way, as there is no way of knowing if each of these victims were themselves American citizens.