Trafficker and "pollero": the Mexican mayor sentenced to 15 months in prison in the United States

Rogelio Aboyte Limón, mayor of Bácum, a community of the Mexican state of Sonora, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for using a false pbadport to enter the United States and failing to disclose his criminal recordlocal media reported.

Aboyte Limón has been appointed mayor of Bácum, which is part of the territory where the Yaqui indigenous people live, in September 2018. The politician is part of Morena, the party of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The 48-year-old mayor went to the United States last December with the intention of taking his family to Disneyland, but arrested on December 27 in Nogales, Arizona, when immigration services discovered that his pbadport was fake.

In January of this year, Aboyte Limón pleaded guilty to the fraudulent use of a pbadport and also confirmed that he had not disclosed in a timely manner that he had already been sentenced for d & # 39; other counts of indictment..

Under an alias, Aboyte served a 70-month prison sentence for trafficking about 21 kilos of cocaine in the state of Indiana in 2010. In addition, he had previously been found guilty of illegally entering the state of Arizona in 1999 and 2000. At that time, according to US Attorney General Heather Siegele, He was also arrested for illegal trafficking of people, reported the "Arizona Daily Star".

When he pleaded guilty in January 2019, Brown, his party in Mexico, said that, whatever the decision of the American justice, "will not go to the defense of activists or authorities emanating from participating in illegal actions inside or outside the country."

Through a document sent from the place where he was detained, Aboyte Limón asked in January to separate from the mayor's post for 90 days, on the pretext that he was ill. and requires medical treatment. Francisco Javier Gaxiola served as Acting President of Bácum.

But with the decision of the American courts, Aboyte should be permanently separated from his post. "He is completely ashamed and wants to correct his mistakes as soon as possible," Ramiro Flores, a lawyer in the political council, said in a memo quoted by US media.

In the presentation of the evidence to convict Aboyte Limón, US prosecutors presented evidence showing how The mayor used three different identities to obtain the false pbadport, in addition to fraudulent visas for his wife and children.

The defense attorney tried to convince the judge of his innocence by claiming that Aboyte would never have dreamed of being involved in any type of illegal activity and that the trip he made to the United States with his family was simply to take his kids to Disneyland.

The US Attorney's Office however requested an 18-month sentence of imprisonment, but Judge Raner C. Collins ruled that there would be 15 in all. Although the defense asked Aboyte not to go to jail because of conbad heart failure, he will have to serve his sentence in a federal prison because his application was denied.