Naysayers of the incoming presidential administration note that mass deportation operations, like those promised by Donald Trump, have hardly been executed in our nation’s history, but then again, the country has never before admitted 10 million illegal aliens — in some case, without so much as vetting a driver’s license — in four short years. An unprecedented problem may require an unprecedented solution, and while we can disagree about how far to take deportations, Trump has the resounding mandate of with whom to start.
When Trump returns to the Oval Office, 1.4 million illegal aliens will already have deportation orders signed by an immigration judge. The next and most obvious tranche of candidates the White House will be obligated, not just invited, to deport is the serial common criminals who escalate to increasingly violent crimes. In no case is the pathology and pathway for identifying these aliens better exemplified than Jose Ibarra, the man convicted of murdering Laken Riley in cold blood.
A Venezuelan national with ties to Tren de Aragua, Ibarra illegally crossed the Southern border between ports of entry in 2022. Despite committing this first crime, federal authorities paroled him and released him into the country after arresting him on the American side of the border.
Ibarra resided in New York City’s once-iconic Roosevelt Hotel, which the Big Apple had transformed into a migrant shantytown on the taxpayer dime. In September 2023, the New York Police Department arrested and charged Ibarra with child endangerment and license violation, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement claimed that NYPD released Ibarra “before a detainer could be issued.” According to Ibarra’s one-time roommate, taxpayers then bankrolled Ibarra’s “humanitarian” flight down to Georgia, where he was arrested on separate theft charges in October 2023. Police once again released Ibarra, who failed to appear in court over the shoplifting case. Although the judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest over this absence, it was too late. Just two months later, Ibarra would hunt down a 22-year-old nursing student on a jog, drag her off the running trail, and attempt to rape her. After Laken Riley fought Ibarra off for 17 minutes, Ibarra beat her skull with a rock and strangled her to death. He is now sentenced to life in prison.
For all that immigration maximalists decry the potential economic losses of otherwise law-abiding agricultural workers and janitors facing deportation, the preventable and lamentable case of Laken Riley’s murder exemplifies what exactly Trump should be looking for in illegal immigrants prioritized for deportation. How is this for a compromise?
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If you manage to never wind up in the crosshairs of law enforcement over a crime against people or property, and if you avoid milking either federal or local taxpayers for cash, you can quietly bide your time at the bottom of the line. But if, like Ibarra, you are arrested for endangering a child or dependent on taxpayers for free hotel stays and flights across the country, you must be deported without question and without avenue to appeal. In the case of Ibarra, we have at least five strikes that he violated, but beginning with just one strike seems fair enough. Sure, we can discuss the implication of deportation on DoorDash costs and harvest seasons eventually, but pruning the population of the actual rapists and murderers is the real national emergency.