The Daily - The Murder of Laken Riley

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and death.On Wednesday afternoon, a guilty verdict was reached in the death of the Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. A 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was convicted.Rick Rojas, the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, discusses the case, and how it became a flashpoint in the national debate over border security.Guest: Rick Rojas, the Atlanta bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Ms. Riley, 22, was attacked in February while running on a trail on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Her killer was sentenced to life in prison.Lawmakers in Georgia approved tougher rules on immigration after the killing.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Hey, it's Michael. Just a quick note. Today's episode contains some graphic depictions of violence. May it please the court, counsel. On February 22nd, Jose Abara put on a black hat, a hoodie-style jacket, and some black kitchen-style disposable gloves, and he went hunting for females on the University of Georgia's campus. And in his hunt, he encountered 22-year-old Lakin Riley on her morning jog. 22-year-old Lakin Riley on her morning jog. And when Lakin Riley refused to be his rape victim,

he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly. That is what this case is all about. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. On Wednesday afternoon, inside a courtroom in Athens, Georgia, a guilty verdict was reached in what prosecutors have described as a cut-and-dried case of cold-blooded murder. But outside that courtroom, the case has become something far bigger. Today, national reporter Rick Rojas on how the death of Lakin Reilly has become a flashpoint in

the national debate over border security, illegal immigration, and mass deportation. It's Thursday, November 21st. Rick, tell us about the woman at the center of this entire story, Lakin Riley. So, Lakin Riley is a 22-year-old nursing student living in Athens, which is a bustling college town here in Georgia. It's about an hour, hour and a half away from Atlanta. And she's just leading a very kind of normal college life. She lives in a house close to the University of Georgia campus with a group of roommates.

They talk about each other like they're family. They have meals together. They have movie nights. They share each other's locations from their phones so they can keep an eye on each other. And Laken is an avid runner. She regularly suits up and takes a long jog. And that's exactly what she did on the morning of February 22nd.

At about 9 a.m., she heads out for a run. And then she heads into the woods, running on what is usually a very placid, peaceful, widely considered safe place. The first sign of trouble comes about 10 minutes later. She activates the emergency function on her iPhone and it calls 911. A dispatcher picks up the phone and keeps asking if anyone's there, but the line is silent. For almost a minute, there's no response. And then you hear a faint voice saying, Yo Tango, or I have in Spanish. And then the call ends. After about an hour from 9am to

10am and then to 11am, Lakin's roommates start to get worried about her. Like, where is she? What happened? And so that's when they use the location sharing function on the phone to try to track her down. It did not give a precise location, but it gave them a rough sense of where she was. And in the course of looking for her, one of her roommates actually finds one of her AirPods on the ground.

And that's like a very chilling sign that, you know, something's going on with Laken. That's when they call in the police. And so a campus police officer from the University of Georgia sets out looking for her and they find her shortly after noon that day. Her body has been dragged about 60 feet from the trail. She's been covered with leaves. Her top has been lifted over her head. Hmm.

She's bloodied, clearly beaten. And it's clear from that moment that there's been a vicious attack that ended in Laken Reilly's death. So not long after Laken's body is discovered, investigators start finding all kinds of evidence. They find a bloody jacket that's been thrown away in a dumpster. They find security camera footage showing someone throwing that jacket away. They find her phone with a thumbprint on it. They find DNA evidence under her fingernails that they believe shows who her attacker was. And they quickly find and arrest her suspected killer.

And as far as the authorities are concerned, like it's pretty open and shut case. Like it's very straightforward who they believe did this and that they have the evidence to back that up. As awful as this case is, as gruesome as the details are, it's also not the sort of case that would necessarily rise to a national news story until we find out who the police have arrested. What do you mean? So we quickly learned that the suspect had come into the United States illegally and

suddenly this is no longer simply a local murder case. It becomes something much bigger and it becomes a political symbol. Which we're going to get to, but Rick first tell us about this suspect and how he ended up in these woods near the University of Georgia. So Jose Antonio Ibarra is a 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela who had this circuitous path that led him to Athens, Georgia. He entered the United States illegally on the border near El Paso, Texas, in September of 2022, Texas in September of 2022. And he's arrested by immigration authorities. And then he is released while his case is being

reviewed. It's happening at a time when the border and the Biden administration in particular has just been overwhelmed by a surge in border crossings, and particularly with migrants coming from Venezuela, migrants like Mr. Ibarra. So what happens to him once he's released into the United States? He heads to New York City. First he goes to Queens. He stays at a Crown Plaza hotel there that had been converted into a migrant shelter.

And while he was in New York, in August of 2022, he was arrested for driving a scooter without a license with a child who was not wearing a helmet. He was not prosecuted or jailed in that case. A few weeks later, he goes to the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, which had become the city's official welcome center for migrants. And he goes through a process that's known as reticketing where the city pays for migrants to move elsewhere. And so he gets a ticket to leave for Atlanta on September 28th. And that's how he ends up in Athens and Georgia where his brother already is and has found work.

So he briefly becomes part of this wave of migrants that those of us who live in New York City remember really well. There are so many coming so quickly that the city sets up a bunch of hotels and shelters to deal with them and ultimately allows some, perhaps even encourages some, it sounds like including Ybarra, to leave New York City and go someplace else to relieve the pressure on city resources. Right. And so at that point, he moves to Athens and lives in an apartment complex that's just a short walking distance from the University of Georgia campus that's home to working-class

immigrants who have ended up here in this Georgia city from all over the place, including Asia and Latin America. And so then in October, just a few more weeks after he arrives in Georgia, he and his brother are both arrested in connection with a shoplifting case at a local Walmart. But he's not detained. The authorities run his name through state and national databases at the time, but don't find any warrants for him. And so he's released. So I just want to be sure I understand at this point, he's been arrested three times.

First time when he enters a country unlawfully, but then he is released a second time in New York City for the scooter incident now a third time for shoplifting. And at no point it sounds like is there any effort to detain him for some meaningful period or perhaps deport him. Right. And so because of all of this, his immigration status, his previous arrests, his repeated releases, when he's arrested for murdering Laken Reilly, the case just blows up. You know, I said earlier it became a political symbol. And remember the timing. It's February and a presidential election year. This is Georgia, a swing state, and

illegal immigration is a huge priority for voters. Right. So Republicans all the way up to Donald Trump decide that this is the case to focus on. This for them is the case that encapsulates all the dangers of illegal migration. And they're going to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it as much as humanly possible. We'll be right back. So Rick, what exactly do Republicans do with this case back in February once Jose Ibarra is arrested and his immigration status becomes widely understood. They waste no time speaking out about it. Our hearts are breaking this morning for the family of Lakin Reilly. Just two days after Lakin Reilly is killed, Brian Kemp, Georgia's Republican governor,

sends a letter to President Biden demanding answers about Jose Ibarra's immigration status. Lakin's death is a direct result of failed policies on the federal level and an unwillingness by this White House to secure the southern border. And he even delivers a speech about it where he just rips into Biden. And because of the White House's failures, every state is now a border state.

And Lakin Riley's murder is just the latest proof of that. And then two weeks later, Georgia Republicans bring the issue to President Biden even more directly at his State of the Union address. Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States. As President Biden enters the House of Representatives, he is confronted by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia. She's wearing a t-shirt that says, say her name.

She's wearing a pin with Lake and Riley's face on it. And then during the speech, my team began serious negotiations with the bipartisan... As President Biden starts to talk about legislative efforts to address immigration issues, Representative Green speaks up. Not really. I... She begins heckling President Biden during his address, goading him to say her name and to directly address this case. And so he does. at least he attempts to.

Lincoln, Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. In the process of trying to say her name, he mispronounces it, which is given more fodder to conservatives. But at the same time, he says that this is an innocent young woman who has been killed by an illegal, a term that is deeply offensive to many people on

the left and immigration advocates for immigrants who see this term as just dehumanizing and pejorative. And so in a way, he ends up just pleasing no one. Right. He just wades right into this mess and just makes it even worse in some ways. He just offends everyone across the board. So by this point, the death of Laken Riley has gone national into the most watched presidential speech of the year. Where does it go from there?

It goes right to the center of President Trump's campaign this year. From 2016 on, Trump has focused a lot of his attention on illegal immigration and he's tried to portray undocumented immigrants as violent and used a lot of incendiary language, even playing on racial stereotypes and anxieties to try to describe the minutes that he says they have been to the country. And now suddenly, as his campaign is heating up again, and he returns to this theme of

illegal immigration, he has a villain that he can point to as representative of everything that he has been arguing for years. And so Trump and his allies just bring this case up exhaustively. Lakin was a brilliant young student. They bring it up at rallies. He was assaulted, beaten, and horrifically murdered by an illegal alien. They bring it up in advertisements and in conservative media. Lakin Riley should have been able to go on a run in broad daylight without being murdered by an illegal immigrant.

All in an effort to paint this case as something widespread or common. How many more killers has Biden set free? In their view, it is representative of this bigger failure on the part of the Biden administration to crack down on illegal immigration and to crack down on the southern border. And they framed this case as just the tip of an iceberg. Right. And it felt like the Biden campaign was struggling when Biden was the nominee to respond to this because this incident had occurred on his watch and there had been a meaningful rise in illegal immigration when

he was president. But I want to just pause Rick and ask, based on your reporting, how representative what Jose Ibarra is accused of doing here really is of undocumented immigrants. According to Trump and Republicans, this is common. This is a real threat. Well, what's the actual reality of it? I mean, this is very clearly an aberration. What Jose Ibarra is accused of doing is in no way reflective of the intentions or the actions of the vast majority of the people who are undocumented and who enter the United States.

The studies have repeatedly shown the opposite, that this is a population that is doing everything they can to avoid detection, to keep their head down. And their intention is not to come here and sow unrest and to perpetrate violence. It's really to get away from something else and seek economic opportunity. And so while this case is very much real, it's not necessarily an indictment of undocumented people more broadly. But President Trump and other conservatives have highlighted this case because it so neatly

makes the point that they want to make, even if the evidence more broadly doesn't bear this out. Right. Of course, for many Americans, one murder by somebody who is in the United States unlawfully is going to be one murder to many, but even if the end of Jose Ibarra's journey in the United States is rare, a violent act, a murder, it feels like the rest of his journey feels much more common for somebody who comes here illegally. He enters the country, he's given taxpayer-funded resources in multiple locations, and he is

not deported even when he does have encounters with law enforcement. And that part of the story on its own for a lot of people is very problematic. Yes. One murder is too many for sure. But I think as you said, Ibarra's entire journey touches on many people's frustrations, where the system is falling short and how migrants in these situations are treated. And I think there's this underlying sense of fairness that I think drives a lot of the opposition. Before the election, when I talked to voters, I heard about that, about the resources, about the taxpayer dollars that have gone to supporting these migrants,

that they're getting access to support and a pathway to a secure place in this country that doesn't exist for other people. They look at Jose Barr and say, why did this person get a hotel room in New York City paid for by the government? Why was he flown to Georgia on the taxpayers' dime? And whether you think this is a good use of money or not, those are the questions that are being asked.

Why is someone who is here unlawfully getting something that US citizens aren't? How does that make sense? And then on top of all these questions of fairness, now you have this murder. Right, and after this presidential campaign from Donald Trump, in which he makes immigration and at times this case, which he has invoked, such a big part of his message, Trump wins

the election. He wins Georgia, where this crime happened, among other swing states. And millions of voters, tens of millions of voters, effectively endorse his call for mass deportation on a scale we have never seen before in the United States. He's calling for millions of people to be deported and in his telling, somebody like Jose Ibarra is exactly who should be deported when that mass deportation starts. And then as fate would have it, right after this election, in fact, I think just two weeks after this election, this murder trial of Jose Abara begins in Athens, Georgia.

Right. And the trial moves fast. The defense was concerned about being able to find a jury in Athens, a city that was just rattled by this killing, who could dispassionately hear the evidence and render a verdict. So they ask for a bench trial instead, meaning it's the judge who decided whether or not he was guilty.

And so after four days of testimony, the judge reaches his verdict, and he delivers it just 15 minutes after the lawyers had finished their closing arguments. Right, he did not hesitate. No, he found him guilty. And then later in the afternoon, he sentenced Ebarra to life in prison

without the possibility of parole. And Rick, now that Jose Ebarra has been convicted and sentenced, how do we think that this case will live on in a post-election world in which the president-elect, and soon to be inaugurated, President Trump, is talking so much about illegal immigration and mass deportation. I think he just a day or so ago mentioned a plan to invoke a national emergency and use the military to carry out mass deportation.

What happens to this case given how it has now been resolved in that context? So this guilty verdict is already being embraced as validation by the people who have raised the profile of this case from the very beginning. You know, the people who have wanted to focus on this case as a justification for cracking down on illegal immigration. Not long after the verdict on Wednesday, Trump came out and celebrated it and linked it to his plan for deportation. He said, it's time to secure our border and remove these criminals and thugs from our country so nothing like this can happen again.

And so clearly this case is going to be a part of how this new administration makes the case for mass deportation. The outcome of this election and the outcome of this trial all but ensured that this case is going to live on in some way for a very long time. Well, Rick, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, the Republicans who control the House Ethics Committee blocked the release

of a report into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use by former Representative Matt Gates, President-elect Trump's pick to be attorney general. Senators from both parties have asked to see the report as they try to vet Gaetz. But the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, has pressured the Ethics Committee not to make the report's findings public. And the Department of Justice is asking that Google be forced to sell its popular web browser, Chrome. The request was made to a federal judge who ruled back in August that Google has maintained

an illegal monopoly in online search. If the judge accepts the plan, it could radically reshape Google's business. Today's episode was produced by Alex Stark, Sydney Harper, Luke Vanderplug, and Moodz Zadien. It was edited by Liz O'Balin and Maria Byrne, with help from Rachel Quester. Contains original music by Diane Wong, Mary Lozano, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker. And was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Runberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderland. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bobarro. See you tomorrow.