Brother of man accused of killing woman on UGA campus shouldn’t have been out of jail, police say

MACON, Ga. — Diego Ibarra, the brother of the man accused of killing Laken Riley on UGA’s campus, has been denied bond and will be held in jail until his trial for possession of a fake green card.

In a Macon courtroom on Thursday, a judge determined that Ibarra is a flight risk.

Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes also learned more about how Diego Ibarra kept getting out of jail in Athens even though he had several immigration holds.

A spokesperson for the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office said that in 2018, they changed the way they handled immigration holds.

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“…Based on the totality of circumstances at that time, the policy was changed - to decline requests from (ICE) to hold inmates, known as “detainers,” that are not signed by a judge…,” they said in a statement.

Diego Ibarra was accused of biting a Border Patrol agent who arrested him, but was never prosecuted.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement put him in a program with an ankle monitor as an alternative to jail, but was released from that program the next day for some reason.

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Police say he then cut off his ankle monitor and returned to Athens and getting a job at UGA in food service, even though Clarke County deputies arrested him three more times for DUI and shoplifting after he had several immigration holds on him.

Police initially thought that Diego Ibarra was his younger brother, Jose Ibarra, and that’s why they started looking at his background.

While investigating both brothers, police learned that both of them entered the country illegally.

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IN RELATED NEWS:

New court documents claim brother of Laken Riley murder suspect likely a member of Venezuelan gang A new motion requesting the detention of the brother of a man accused of murdering a 22-year-old nursing student on the University of Georgia campus

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