Feds: Murder suspect lived, worked under false name in Joliet

(JOLIET) A man who fled Mexico to avoid a murder charge, then lived and worked in the southwest suburbs under an assumed name, has been transferred to Mexican custody, according to immigration officials.

Juan Ruben Mendoza-Solis, 40, was placed on a chartered aircraft Friday and transferred to Mexican law enforcement custody at the U.S. border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

According to a warrant issued by a Mexican court, the murder happened on Oct. 21, 2008, when 18-year-old Jose Luis Jardon and a friend were walking in Colonia Guerrero, the statement said.

They were approached by two armed men—identified as Juan Ruben Mendoza-Solis and his brother, Alejandro Mendoza-Solis. Juan Ruben Mendoza-Solis then shot Jardon five times, before the brothers fled, authorities said.

Alejandro Mendoza-Solis was convicted of murder and is serving time in a Mexico City prison.

But his brother fled to Illinois in January 2009, and had lived in the Joliet area since. In August, ICE got an anonymous tip and agents arrested him at the Rio Grande Valley Grocery in Joliet, where he had been working under the false name Raymundo Arias-Molina.

On Sept. 10, an immigration judge ordered him removed from the United States and he was held in federal custody until being deported Friday.

“Violent fugitives who believe they can evade justice by fleeing to the United States should be on notice they will find no refuge here,” Ricardo Wong, field director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Chicago, said in the statement.

The deportation “demonstrates the expanded bilateral cooperation to identify, arrest and repatriate Mexican fugitives who have fled to the United States to avoid prosecution,” the statement said.