Federal authorities returned a 50-year-old Mexican national and foreign fugitive wanted for kidnapping to his homeland.
Francisco Lopez-Lopez was nabbed earlier this month by deportation officers with Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston, who said Lopez-Lopez unlawfully entered the U.S. on at least two occasions, according to a March 23 news release.
“ERO partners with law enforcement agencies across the globe to reduce these types of crimes,” ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd Lyons said in the release. “Kidnapping is both terrifying for the victims and lucrative for the perpetrators and criminal organizations. Combating these types of crimes is a high priority for us. Every time ERO Boston removes a dangerous, foreign fugitive from the community it increases public safety for us all.”
ERO officers transported Lopez-Lopez from Massachusetts to the Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, March 22, according to the release. From there, officers took him by ground transportation to the Gateway International Bridge Port of Entry in Brownsville, Texas, where they handed him over to waiting Mexican officials.
Lopez-Lopez first came on the radar of U.S. Border Patrol officials after he unlawfully entered the U.S. near Laredo, Texas, in 2002 and voluntarily returned to Mexico. Roughly a decade later, alerts went out about Lopez-Lopez being wanted for kidnapping by a criminal court in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
U.S. Border Patrol officials again came face-to-face with Lopez-Lopez in September 2022, this time near the U.S. northern border in Lewiston, Maine, where they issued him a notice to appear before an immigration judge and placed him in removal proceedings, the release reported. Once he was transferred to the custody of ERO Boston and a criminal check was conducted, authorities discovered he was wanted on the kidnapping charge in Mexico.
In January, a federal immigration judge with the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review issued a final order for his removal, according to the release.
In fiscal year 2022, ERO took 46,396 noncitizens with criminal histories into custody, the release reported. Among that group, 198,498 of the detainees had earlier charges or convictions, including 21,531 assault offenses; 8,164 sex and sexual assault offenses; 5,554 weapons offenses; 1,501 homicide-related offenses; and 1,114 kidnapping offenses.
