The man accused of killing a nursing student in Georgia earlier this year "went out hunting for females" on the day Laken Riley was killed, prosecutors told a judge Friday on the first day of Jose Antonio Ibarra's murder trial.

The case was swept up in the debate over immigration after investigators said the perpetrator was a migrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally.

The trial has begun for Jose Ibarra, the man accused of murdering Laken Riley, a nursing student whose body was found on the University of Georgia campus. Riley's death in February became a rallying cry for some political candidates after it was revealed that Ibarra entered the country illegally.