ATHENS, Ga. >> A 26-year-old migrant from Venezuela was convicted today of murdering Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student whose killing has been repeatedly cited by President-elect Donald Trump in his push for the mass deportation of millions of people in the country without legal permission.

Riley, 22, was attacked in February while running on a trail on the University of Georgia campus in Athens. A day later, authorities charged Jose Antonio Ibarra, a migrant who had entered the country illegally, in connection with the killing.

Judge H. Patrick Haggard of state Superior Court found Ibarra guilty after a bench trial that included four days of arguments and testimony. The judge, rather than a jury, decided the case at the request of Ibarra’s lawyers. Prosecutors are seeking a maximum penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

For months, Riley’s name had been invoked by conservatives, who argued that her death had been the result of a failure by the Biden administration to secure the nation’s borders. On the campaign trail, Trump called Ibarra a “monster.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., heckled President Joe Biden about the case during his State of the Union address, goading him into addressing it.

Ibarra was apprehended by Border Patrol agents when he entered the country illegally in 2022 near El Paso, Texas, according to federal officials. Like many migrants, he was released with temporary permission to stay in the country, and he headed at first to New York. Ibarra moved to Athens last year because his brother lived there, according to testimony during the trial, and had told him there were plenty of jobs.

But during the trial, prosecutors largely skirted issues related to Ibarra’s immigration status. Instead, they zeroed in on Feb. 22, portraying him as a predator who was out that morning hunting for women and Riley as a victim who happened to cross his path.

Prosecutors described a harrowing struggle as Riley tried to fend off her attacker, sinking her fingernails into his arms and neck, leaving deep scratches. Then, prosecutors said that Ibarra dragged her off the running trail, where he strangled her and hit her over the head with a rock — using it “like it was a hammer,” Sheila Ross, the special prosecutor leading the case, said in her closing arguments.

A number of local and federal law enforcement witnesses provided detailed accounts that placed Ibarra at the scene of Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone data and GPS tracking data from Riley’s smartwatch.

Ibarra’s lawyers argued that the evidence against him was circumstantial and inconclusive, and that his brother, Diego Ibarra, with whom he shared an apartment in Athens, could have been the culprit.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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