US Migra nabs fugitive Tonala mayor in LA


Written by GR Staff
Saturday, 06 September 2008

Jorge Vizcarra Mayorga, the fugitive deposed mayor of Tonala, was detained in California and returned to Mexico on Tuesday afternoon.

Jorge Vizcarra faces multiple charges in Mexico.U.S. authorities apparently learned Vizcarra was in Los Angeles after his wife crossed the border into the United States carrying 6,000 dollars and his passport. Newspaper reports suggest he was deported for an immigration violation and handed over to Mexican police in Tijuana.

Vizcarra’s family, however, insists that that he voluntarily turned himself in after running out of money, and after his immigration visa expired.

Investigators believe Vizcarra is connected to the April 2007 murder of Carlos Romo, Tonala’s former director of Urban Improvement and one of the former mayor’s closest advisors.

Police say Romo and other senior Tonala officials ran an extortion ring inside city hall that squeezed money from the municipality’s illegal slot machine operators to the tune of some 100 million pesos a year.

The Jalisco Congress had stripped Vizcarra of his immunity from prosecution on December 19 last year, but the State Attorney General’s Office waited four days to charge him with abuse of authority, criminal association and first-degree homicide. There was a further three-day delay before prosecutors filed the correct paperwork to seek and detain Vizcarra, who was, by then, long gone.

Vizcarra insists that he is the innocent victim of a political plot and bad press, and fled solely as a result of fear.
http://guadalajarareporter.com/content/view/22745/83/