Diego Ibarra, the brother of a man indicted for the killing of nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia in February, has pleaded guilty to possessing a fake green card.
Ibarra, 29, was initially arrested by law enforcement for matching the description of his brother Antonio, sought for Riley's murder, and handed the document determined to be false. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in early March and this week pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a fraudulent document.
The sentence is expected on October 7. Ibarra faces a maximum of ten years in prison and up to three years of supervised release, as well as a $250,000 fine per count. Another Ibarra brother, Argenis, and a former roommate were also indicted of the crimes and face the same potential punishments.
Ibarra's plea comes as his brother's actions went back to the national spotlight on Tuesday night, during the second day of the Republican National Convention. It happened when Texas Senator Ted Cruz accused President Joe Biden of neglecting border security. He then recalled the names of Americans allegedly killed by undocumented immigrants, Laken Riley among them.
"As a result of Joe Biden's presidency, your family is less safe. Your children are less safe. The country is less safe. But here's the good news: we can fix it. And when Donald Trump is president, we will fix it!" Cruz said during a passage of his speech.
"We know this because he's done it before. I know this because I worked hand in hand with President Trump to secure our border and we achieved the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years."
Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, pleaded not guilty to the charges pressed against him. He faces 10 charges, among them felony murder, malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape. Prosecutors in the case are looking for Ibarra to be sentenced to life without parole, which would rule out the death penalty.
Riley, a nursing student at the Augusta University College of Nursing, disappeared after going for a jog on February 22. She was later found dead as a result of "blunt force trauma," police said.
University Police Chief Jeff Clark said that it didn't look like Ibarra new Riley and that the killing was a "crime of opportunity where he saw an individual and bad things happened." According to the grand jury's indictment, Ibarra tried to rape Riley before "inflicting blunt-force trauma to her head and "asphyxiating her in a manner unknown to jurors."
Diego Ibarra, on his end, is suspected of having ties to Tren de Aragua, a gang recently declared a transnational criminal organization in the U.S. Prosecutors believe that a five-pointed crown tattooed on the left side of his neck, as well as a five-pointed star on the right side are commonly found among its members.
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