Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office says it’s “outrageous” that the illegal migrant convicted of killing Laken Riley may have taken a free Biden administration flight from the Big Apple before he committed the heinous murder.
The furious reaction came as Jose Ibarra, 26, was sentenced to life without parole Wednesday for killing the 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia, in a case that ignited a national firestorm over immigration.
“The recent revelation of how Laken Riley’s alleged killer made it to Georgia is outrageous,” the Republican governor’s spokesman told the Daily Caller just before the Tren de Aragua gang member was convicted.
Ibarra’s ex-roommate had testified during his trial earlier this week that he had flown from New York to Georgia after requesting a free flight while at the Roosevelt Hotel migrant intake center in Manhattan.
Sources later told The Post that Ibarra was put on the taxpayer-funded flight from JFK to Atlanta, Ga., in September last year — just six months before he hunted down and killed the Augusta University student.
Kemp’s office said it is demanding answers from the Biden administration on how Ibarra ended up in the Peach State.
“While the Biden administration continues to ignore our request for accurate and detailed information on illegal border crossings and relocations efforts, Governor Kemp has positioned Georgia to do what it can to address the crisis at the border,” Kemp’s spokesperson said.
He added that the governor had taken “decisive action like deploying our National Guardsmen to the U.S. southern border and signing legislation that strengthened Georgia’s reporting requirements for illegal immigrants arrested for crimes and ban on sanctuary cities.”
The Roosevelt Hotel, which is where Ibarra apparently accepted the flight, was established as a temporary migrant intake center by the city amid the Big Apple’s worsening asylum seeker crisis.
In a bid to help ease the crisis, the city set up a so-called “reticketing center” in October 2023 that provided migrants with federally funded one-way plane tickets anywhere in the world.
“In Manhattan, we requested for a humanitarian flight to come here to Atlanta,” Ibarra’s former roommate, Rosebeli Flores-Bello, testified during the trial.
City Hall declined comment to The Post, but a source confirmed Ibarra’s taxpayer-funded flight.
In the wake of Ibarra’s conviction, Kemp issued a statement saying justice had been served as he ripped the Biden admin’s open border policy.
“This criminal should never have been allowed to enter our country, and he certainly should not have been allowed to stay after shamelessly breaking our laws,” he said.
“Open border policies failed Laken Riley, and today’s verdict is a reminder that the safety of our communities must remain our number one priority.”