Border Patrol agents arrest former Mexican cop in Othello

The U.S. Border Patrol said agents in Othello, Washington, have arrested a former Mexican police officer who was accused of homicide a decade ago.

A spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Spokane sector, Bill Kingsford, said he was not authorized to disclose the man’s name, in keeping with the agency’s usual practice of withholding such information.

Kingsford said the man, a former Tijuana municipal police officer, was arrested in Othello on Thursday.

According to a news release, the man entered the United States legally in 2013, but shortly afterward authorities learned he had been arrested in Mexico in 2008 and 2009 on charges of homicide and drug possession, and his legal status was revoked.

The news release said agents transported the man to Tacoma for an immigration hearing. It offered no details about the status of his homicide and drug cases.

Immigrants arrested in Eastern Washington are often held for brief periods at the Yakima County Jail while en route to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. Attempts to identify the former Tijuana officer through jail booking records were unsuccessful.

An officer at the Adams County Jail said the facility holds some inmates on behalf of immigration authorities, but he couldn’t immediately find information about the man taken into custody Thursday without a name. Yakima County officials did not respond to messages seeking comment Monday.