EL PASO – A young police chief, fired after abandoning her post in one of Mexico’s most dangerous drug war towns, is in the United States, authorities have said.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency confirmed that Marisol Valles (20), the former police chief of Praxedis G Guerrero near Mexico’s violent city of Ciudad Juarez, is in the United States pending a hearing before a US federal immigration judge.
“Valles-Garcia is in the United States and she will have the opportunity to present the facts of her case before an impartial immigration judge,” said an agency official, who declined to be named.
The El Paso Times newspaper reported that Ms Valles had been taken to a detention centre in the Texas border city. Reuters was unable to confirm the report.
Ms Valles was fired on Monday by the town’s mayor for not showing up to work after Mexican media reported that she had received death threats.
Her absence prompted media speculation that she had sought asylum over the border in the United States.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement official declined to provide further details on her case “absent a signed privacy waiver”.
A feisty criminology student, Ms Valles took charge of the police force in the town – a few miles south of the border from El Paso – last October, sparking intense media attention after few candidates dared to apply for the dangerous job.
The mother of an infant son, she was due back at her post this week after taking leave on March 2nd to attend to personal matters, but a Mexican newspaper reported that she had fled the country after being threatened by drug gangs.
Ms Valles, a petite woman with dark glasses, amazed many Mexicans with her courage for taking up the post just days after drug hitmen killed the mayor in a nearby town in a region where many police officers have quit or been killed.
With some 8,000 killings in and around Ciudad Juarez over the past three years, the region has become one of the world’s deadliest places.
Gangs fighting over smuggling routes into the United States, local drug sales and lucrative extortion and kidnapping rackets have made the area virtually lawless. – (Reuters)