The mother of a 14-year-old boy suspected of working as an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel pleaded guilty today to a federal charge of being a deported alien found in the United States.
Yolanda Jimenez Lugo, 43, faces a sentence ranging from 18 to 24 months in prison when sentenced April 25 by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, said defense attorney Jack Boltax.
Magistrate Judge Ruben Brooks told Lugo that she will likely be deported to Mexico as a result of her guilty plea.
Boltax told the court that Lugo was not a U.S. citizen but was a citizen of Mexico. The attorney said his client was convicted in 1997 in San Diego Superior Court of an aggravated felony, possession for sale of drugs, and deported to Mexico.
U.S. Border Patrol personnel arrested Lugo at her apartment on South 31st Street in Logan Heights last year. She was arrested along with her husband, 46-year-old Gabriel Aguirre Manuel, who also is expected to plead guilty next Thursday.
Lugo's teenage son, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, was arrested Dec. 2 in Mexico on suspicion of killing drug gang rivals -- beheading some of them -- as part of his alleged work for the South Pacific drug-trafficking cartel.
The teen was captured at an airport in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state, as he and one of his older sisters were about to board a flight to Tijuana, from where they intended to cross into the United States to be with their mother in San Diego, according to news accounts.
The boy and his 19-year-old sister, Elizabeth Jimenez Lugo, allegedly worked for Julio "El Negro" Padilla, who has been trying to seize control of the illicit drug market in Morelos through violence, authorities have said.
