N.Y.C. Helped Migrant Accused of Killing Laken Riley Move to Georgia, Witness Says

In other testimony, law enforcement witnesses placed the suspect, José Ibarra, at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone and GPS tracking data.

Details of how the Venezuelan migrant charged with killing Laken Riley ended up in Athens, Ga., came into sharper focus on Monday, the second day of a trial that is being closely followed by supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s planned immigration crackdown.

The migrant, José Ibarra, was apprehended by the Border Patrol when he entered the country illegally in 2022 near El Paso. Like many migrants, he was released with temporary permission to stay in the country, and he headed to New York.

A former roommate of Mr. Ibarra’s testified that she met Mr. Ibarra last year in New York City and traveled with him to Athens in September 2023 after Mr. Ibarra’s brother told them they could find jobs there.

They lived for a while with Mr. Ibarra’s wife and mother-in-law at a Crowne Plaza hotel in Queens that had been converted to a migrant shelter, the roommate, Rosbeli Flores-Bello, said. And for a few weeks, she added, she and Mr. Ibarra lived in a car parked on the street by the hotel.

Ms. Flores-Bello said that Mr. Ibarra’s brother Diego had constantly called him in New York, telling him to move to Athens because there were good work opportunities.

In early September last year, Ms. Flores testified, she and Mr. Ibarra asked for plane tickets to Atlanta at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan, which had become New York City’s official welcome center for migrants. Through a process known as “re-ticketing,” the city has paid for the travel of tens of thousands of migrants who wish to move elsewhere.

They flew to Atlanta on Sept. 28 and moved into the apartment in Athens where, five months later, Ms. Flores-Bello would awake to police officers coming to arrest her roommate on a murder charge.

Ms. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, set off for a run shortly after 9 a.m. on Feb. 22. Prosecutors say that she encountered Mr. Ibarra on a wooded trail on the University of Georgia campus, about a mile from her apartment. He blocked her as she tried to call 911 for help, according to an indictment, and pulled up her clothes with the intent to rape her.

Mr. Ibarra then strangled her and hit her over the head multiple times with a rock, “seriously disfiguring” her, the indictment said.

The case became a rallying cry for Mr. Trump and other Republicans who wanted to frame Ms. Riley’s killing as a result of President Biden’s failure to secure the nation’s borders. In particular, Mr. Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that many migrants are violent criminals.

In other testimony on Tuesday, a number of local and federal law enforcement witnesses provided detailed accounts that placed Mr. Ibarra at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone data and GPS tracking data from Ms. Riley’s smart watch.

The data from her phone and watch placed the two within feet of each other. The heart-rate monitor on Ms. Riley’s watch also provided an unsettling account of how her run, and life, came to an end.

Exhibits introduced into evidence showed that Ms. Riley tried to call 911 from her iPhone’s emergency SOS function at 9:11 a.m. The watch stopped transmitting heart rate data just before 9:30 a.m.

More than once, the evidence brought Ms. Riley’s mother, seated in the courtroom with relatives and friends, to tears.

According to the exhibits that prosecutors presented, Mr. Ibarra’s phone registered a transaction at a liquor store at 9:30 p.m. the night before Ms. Riley’s death. He tried to make a call to his brother Diego at 2:31 a.m. He posted two selfies to his Snapchat account, at 4:30 a.m. and 5:37 a.m., hours before the murder.

An F.B.I. agent testified that the clothes Mr. Ibarra was wearing in those photos looked like those of a man who was later captured on security camera footage as he deposited a jacket into a dumpster. Testing found that the jacket contained Ms. Riley’s DNA.

Prosecutors also played a recording of a phone call between Mr. Ibarra and his wife, Layling Franco, while he was in jail.

Abasis Ramirez, a staff operations specialist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, provided a live translation of the call as it was played for the judge.

In the call Ms. Franco asked, “What happened to the girl?” Ms. Ramirez said, adding that Mr. Ibarra replied, “Enough, enough.”

Ms. Franco also told Mr. Ibarra during the call that “it’s crazy that they don’t have anyone else’s DNA,” according to the translator.

Mr. Ibarra denied knowing anything about the murder, according to Ms. Ramirez.

“No, no, no, no — you’re not going to come here and lie to me,” Ms. Franco told Mr. Ibarra in the call. “I know you. You know something.”

The prosecution is expected to rest its case on Tuesday; defense lawyers told the judge, H. Patrick Haggard of State Superior Court, that they would not need more than half a day to present their own witnesses and evidence.

Judge Haggard is holding a bench trial, with no jury, at the request of Mr. Ibarra’s lawyers. In such trials, the judge alone determines whether the defendant is guilty.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting from New York.

Our Coverage of U.S. Immigration

• Broken Border Fuels Big Profits: Some staffing firms have long exploited undocumented migrants for corporate America, building an unseen engine of the on-demand economy.
• Trump’s Crackdown: President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the Biden administration for what he calls its lax handling of the border — but it has left him with tools he can use to shut down the border.
• Undocumented Spouses: A federal judge struck down a new Biden administration program that sought to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to American citizens.
• Trump’s Immigration Raids: Five years ago, the raids upended life for immigrant families in poultry towns, but the industry still runs on their work.
• A Broken System: President Biden’s legacy on immigration will largely be limited to his success in lowering border crossings. But his approach has drawn criticism, and some of his actions have moved the problem deeper into the country.