US immigration officers have created a former Mexican presidential candidate from federal prisons and sent him south of the border this week.
Thomas Jesus Yarrington Luvalkaba, 68, was removed by US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Wednesday and handed over to Mexican authorities waiting for him at the busy San Isidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana.
He is hardly home.
Yarrington faces charges in Mexico that include organized criminal activity and illegally acquired assets. He was sentenced to 108 months in Illinois' federal corrections facility, Thomson, after pleading guilty in the United States to conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2021.
Some may consider Thomson to be a low-security prison with 1,500 prisoners and a resort compared to the violent and unsanitary circumstances seen in many Mexican lockups with no indication of reform. According to Human Rights Watch:
“The Mexico prison system is characterized by massive overcrowding, worsening physical facilities, untrained and extremely low-paid security guards and other prison staff, corruption throughout the system, and most fundamentally lack of money.”
Yarrington was also governor of Mexico's Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005, and was run in 2005 as a presidential candidate for Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party. Tamaulipas is a coastal state in the US Gulf and has an economy based on the tropical climate and petrochemical industry.
Yarrington was accused of obtaining bribery as governor for millions of dollars at the federal ju judge in Texas. He started in his local office. Since 1998, US authorities have said that Yarrington robbed money from illegal drug trafficking when he was Mayor Matamoros at the US border.
US immigration It has been reported The Security Alliance for its Ice Eromexico City and the Flow Enforcement Initiative helped to provide essential documents on Yarrington's history during his immigration procedures that led to the removal to Mexico. Ice listed:
“According to court documents, Yarrington accepted bribes from Mexican individuals and private companies, and while serving as governor, he accepted bribes to do business with Tamaulipas. In the United States, he purchased beachfront condominiums, large-scale real estate, commercial developments, airplanes and luxury cars.”
In April 2017, authorities captured Yarrington in Italy while he was traveling with an assumed name and a fake passport. He was taken into custody on a provisional arrest warrant based on the charges returned in May 2013.
The former U.S. governor's claims and convictions were the efforts of a team that includes the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation, the FBI and the Texas Attorney General's Office. The US Lawyer's Office in the Southern District of Texas handled the prosecution.
On February 27, an immigration judge from the DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Examination ordered Yarrington to be removed. He waived his right to appeal.
Contributor Lowell Corfyel is the author of the bestseller Under the line And nine other crime novels and non-fiction titles. look lowellcauffiel.com more.
