Mexican drug suspects deported to U.S.

They were arrested last year in the biggest drug bust in Belizean history–almost three thousand, four hundred pounds of high quality Colombian cocaine. But from the day they were remanded to prison, Mexicans Jorge Moreno, Victor Carasco and Oscar Aguirre represented a nightmare for the Belizean law enforcement system. As their trial dragged on in Magistrate’s Court and the risk of a jailbreak intensified, Belizean officials finally decided that the cause of justice would best be served by deporting the trio to the United States of America. That suited the U.S.A. just fine as the men were wanted there on a number of major drug charges, particularly Moreno, whose real name is Jorge Manuel Torres Teyer. It is alleged that Torres was a key member of Mexico’s Southeast cartel who specialised in the precise routing of cocaine shipments from Colombia through Belize and Mexico into the United States. Having been put on Saturday’s flight to Dallas, Torres now faces two federal charges in the Southern District of New York: conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to import cocaine. Each charge faces a maximum of forty years in prison. Charges will also be filed against Carasco and Aguirre.

The deportation of Torres also helps expel the embarrassment caused when it was learned that the prisoner had legally changed his name and purchased a Belizean passport. Torres changed his nationality, presumably to avoid deportation, since under the law a citizen of Belize cannot be deported. For the U.S. to get him, it would have been necessary to have him extradited, a long and difficult legal process. That ploy failed when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration revoked the Mexican’s new nationality on the grounds that it was fraudulently obtained through the making of false declarations and concealment of facts–namely that he was wanted in the States for drug trafficking. Torres obtained his new identity and nationality through the economic citizenship programme before it was terminated in January. News 5 understands that the agent for the transaction was Manolo Romero of Belize Passport Consultants, the same company that continued to advertise the sale of Belizean passports a full six months after it became illegal.