Voters Oust Soros-Backed DA Who Oversaw Sanctuary City Policies In County Where Laken Riley Was Murdered
Georgia voters in Athens-Clarke County ousted their disgraced left-wing prosecutor who oversaw traitorous sanctuary city policies where 22-year-old Laken Riley was brutally murdered.
Athens-Clarke and Oconee County District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez lost to Independent Kalki Yalamanchili, who received roughly 60 percent of the vote, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
Gonzalez, a self-described “progressive,” was first elected in 2020 after receiving backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros. Gonzalez was at the center of recent recall efforts spurred by residents who are angry that Gonzalez and other county officials allowed “illegal aliens to freely roam our county,” according to the Athens-Banner Herald.
The county (and country) was shaken to its core when Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was brutally murdered while on a run on a wooded trail near her school. Authorities arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra the next day. Ibarra is an illegal immigrant who arrived to the states from Venezuela in 2022.
The Athens City Council passed a resolution in 2019 welcoming immigrants “of all statuses,” according to Fox 5 Atlanta. The city released a memo in December of 2023 stating Athens-Clarke County supports “undocumented” immigrants. Further, current county policy states the sheriff’s office will not enforce a 48-hour detainer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
“[If a] detainer is issued but is not accompanied by a federal warrant or court order signed by a federal magistrate or federal judge, [the illegal migrant] shall not be held solely on the ICE detainer,” the policy states, according to the report.
As my colleague Jordan Boyd previously reported, Ibarra was previously arrested in New York for “reckless endangerment of a child and acting in a manner injurious to a child.”
“After being locked up, Ibarra was able to bond out and flee to a county that bans law enforcement from asking about immigration status and even offers illegal border crossers legal aid,” Boyd wrote. “It was there that he took the life of an innocent American.”
Like Gonzalez, Vice President Kamala Harris also lost her race, in part due to her traitorous stance on the border crisis — a stance former President Bill Clinton acknowledged directly led to the murder of Riley.
“You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you? They made an ad about it, about a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said.
But Harris claimed for years the border was secure and, as the border czar, turned a blind eye to the invasion.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
