Convicted drug trafficker kicked back to Mexico to face kidnapping charge

A federally convicted meth distributor with alleged ties to the criminal gang Sureños was booted back to Mexico — for a second time — where he is wanted on kidnapping charges.

Jose Manuel Rodriguez-Hermosillo, 39, of Mexico, had already been deported once in 2003 by U.S. Border Patrol, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but at some point had illegally reentered the United States.

He was convicted in September 2019 by the U.S Eastern District Court of California in Sacramento on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. He was sentenced to five years and three months, to be served at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.

That prison released him on October 29, 2001 to the Boston office of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations. In January, a federal immigration judge ordered that he be sent back to Mexico to face a kidnapping charge there.

“The tireless efforts of Boston (Enforcement and Removal Operations) officers and our key law enforcement partners, both domestic and international, guaranteed this dangerous fugitive would face the consequences of his actions,” said Todd M. Lyons, Field Office Director for ERO Boston.

ERO agents from the Boston office escorted Rodriguez-Hermosillo back to the Mexican state of Jalisco on Tuesday, according to ICE.

Sureños, the gang the feds say Rodriguez-Hermosillo belongs to, is a collective term for a number of street-level Mexican gangs in southern California that have grown to have national-level reach, according to a 2011 Federal Bureau of Investigations Gang Threat Assessment report.

The FBI connects the gang to human trafficking and to Mexican drug trafficking criminal enterprises and lists it as operating in at least 30 states from every geographical region of the country from Alaska to Florida. The gang was not listed as operating in Massachusetts, but it is listed in New Hampshire.

“In addition to prison association, some individual Sureño gangs or gang members have migrated out of California and assimilated under the name Sureño, establishing themselves across the country,” according to a fact sheet on the gang issued by the sheriff’s office of Sampson County, North Carolina.

That fact sheet says that the gang conducts low-level drug sales and send 10% of their profits to the “California Mexican Mafia.”

The Mexican Mafia is a prison gang with a heavy presence in southern California, according to a “Gang Recognition Guide” released by the police department in Everett, Washington. The guide says the gang’s name means “Southerners” in Spanish, as they are clustered south of Bakersfield, and have a rivalry with the breakaway group Norteños, or northerners, from north of Bakersfield.