Migrant suspect in Laken Riley murder crossed border in El Paso before being busted in NYC and released, wife reveals

The illegal immigrant arrested for killing a Georgia nursing student crossed the border in Texas Sept. 8 last year and was sent to a processing facility there, but was quickly released before being put on a bus to New York City, where he was later busted and set free again, his wife told The Post.

Jose Antonio Ibarra and wife Layling Franco of Venezuela entered El Paso together with her 5-year-old son, she said.

The family was then sent to the Big Apple Sept. 15, where Ibarra posted smiling, carefree pictures of himself on social media in Times Square and Rockefeller Center.

Ibarra, 26, was working for DoorDash, Uber Eats and a local restaurant when he was arrested in August for endangering the welfare of a child, after he was caught in Queens riding a gas-powered moped with Franco’s son on the back, without any head protection or restraint for the child, according to police sources.

The case was later sealed. 

By November, the couple split up. Jose then went to Georgia to live with his brother Diego, who social media shows once worked at the University of Georgia.

The body of Laken Riley, an Augusta University student who once attended UGA, was found Thursday in a forested part of the UGA campus after she had gone for a run.

Ibarra was arrested and charged Friday with malice and felony murder, aggravated battery, kidnapping, concealing the death of another and other charges in the killing of  in the death of the 22-year-old.

Police down south called the case a “crime of opportunity.”

“Yesterday when [Jose] was arrested, my brother-in-law called me early to say he’d been arrested,” Franco, 23, told The Post, adding she’s now seeing the news of the crime “everywhere.”

Jose, who was from the state of Miranda in their homeland, had briefly returned to New York in December for immigration court, a 32-year-old relative said.

“Yesterday when we found out about what happened, and about Jose, it went over really badly, because it seemed like that girl was really ahead of things,” the relative said of the victim.

He was a calm person, Franco claimed.

“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our entire lives.

“He wasn’t aggressive, none of that,” she said. “We had problems as a couple but our problems weren’t physical. We wouldn’t punch but we’d raise our voices.

He left New York “because he wanted to get a better job in Georgia.”

She said she and her son were in the El Paso facility for five days before they made the journey to New York.

“I want to talk to [Jose],” she said. “I have a lot of faith that this wasn’t him, that there was a misunderstanding somewhere. But if he did, he has to pay for what he did, truly.”

Ibarra’s brother, who was arrested for drunken driving in Georgia in September, was nabbed this week for presenting a fake green card to police as they questioned suspects in Riley’s death, according to federal prosecutors in the Peach State.

He used the illicit green card two weeks ago to secure a temporary position as a dishwasher at the University of Georgia, the school told The Post in a statement.

Diego Ibarra failed to provide further documentation and has since been fired, the school said.

The brothers appeared to be prolific on TikTok and Facebook, where they had multiple accounts, some under different names.

Ibarra appeared to share photos of himself with a handful of others — including a few romantic posts with an unidentified woman. His last TikTok post was a soundless selfie video just two days before his arrest — and one day before Riley vanished during her morning jog.

“Killer parasite,” one person wrote before the accounts started being taken down Saturday. “Death penalty for you,” another commenter ranted.

Additional reporting by Olivia Land and Alyssa Guzman