The former Mexican governor and presidential candidate were deported this week by US Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) after he sentenced federal prison sentences in the US for US laundry this week.
Thomas Jesus Yarrington Luvalkava, 68, was removed with ice on Wednesday and handed over to Mexican authorities he wanted, the agency announced Friday.
Yarrington was Governor of Mexico's Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005, and was run in 2005 as the presidential candidate for Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Former Mexican governor on the run, charged with drug smuggling captured in Italy
Thomas Jesus Yallington Luvalkaba, a 68-year-old former governor of Mexico's Tamaulipas, had been sentenced to federal prison in Illinois on money laundering charges. (FBI Archives)
Before he was transferred to ice custody last summer, he had been sentenced to 108 months at Thomson, a federal correctional facility in Illinois, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2021.
Yarrington was moved from Illinois State Prison to continue immigration hearings, and on February 27, a judge from the Immigration Examination Bureau's Enforcement Bureau ordered him to remove him. The former politician waived his right to appeal.
Mexican authorities arrived at San Isidro port in California and were waiting for his arrival to detain him for the charges he faced there.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement handed over convicted detective Yarington Luvalkaba, former governor of Mexico's Tamaulipas, to Mexican authorities on Wednesday at the port of entry in San Isidro. (Carlos Moreno/Nur Photo via Getty Images)
The former Mexican governor was handed over to us to face drug charges
Court documents showed that during his time as Governor Tamaulipas he accepted bribery from Mexican individuals and private companies to do business with the state, Ice said. He used bribery money to buy real estate in the United States, but used a candidate buyer to hide his involvement.
“Yarrington washed bribery illegally obtained in the United States by purchasing beachfront apartments, large property, commercial developments, planes and luxury cars,” Ice said.
Yarrington was sentenced to 108 months in Illinois' federal corrections facility, Thomson, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, file)
Yarrington was traveling through Italy with an assumed name and fake passport in April 2017. He was taken into custody on a temporary arrest warrant following the May 2013 indictment on various money laundering and drug-related charges.
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Italian authorities ultimately allowed him to be extradited to the United States, and he fought it and arrived in the state in April 2018.
