Woman tortured in native Mexico won’t be returned there, court rules

A federal appeals court has barred the deportation of a California woman who was tortured in her native Mexico by police who beat and choked her, held a gun to her head, and threatened to rape and kill her daughters unless she confessed to a child killing.

The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals had ordered Delfina Soto-Soto deported to Mexico, saying the Mexican government had given assurances that she would not be abused during a renewed investigation of the 2012 kidnapping and murder of a 5-year-old boy. The board, reversing an immigration judge’s ruling, said the government has made efforts to combat torture by police, and noted that Soto had not been physically harmed in her final eight months of captivity before being released.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Mexico has given no credible assurances that Soto would be protected from further abuse if returned to the state where police oversaw her torture nine years ago.

The immigration appeals board, in its deportation order, did not mention that Soto had been tortured into confessing to the murder, or indicate that any of the officers had been punished for what they did to her, Judge Milan Smith said in the 2-1 ruling, issued Friday. He also said Soto-Soto had testified, credibly, that the officers had told her she would be tortured again if she reported their acts to anyone.

Judge Jane Restani of the U.S. Court of International Trade, temporarily assigned to the appeals court, joined Smith’s ruling. Judge J. Clifford Wallace dissented, saying it was “pure speculation” that Soto would be tortured if deported and that Mexican courts have reported some evidence of her possible guilt in the child killing.

The court said Soto, an indigenous woman, was arrested at her home in the town of Uruapan by plainclothes Michoacan state police in April 2012 and driven to a town 2 miles away. There, the court said, police tied her up, beat her and kicked her for hours, poured water into her nose, tied her head in a plastic bag and sat on her stomach so that she nearly suffocated.

When she still refused to confess, the court said, an officer held a gun to her head and said police would bring in her daughters, rape them and kill them in front of her. She then signed the confession.

Mexican courts dismissed the charges in December 2012, and Soto fled to California. But the government reopened the investigation in 2013, saying it had new witnesses, and after the international police agency Interpol issued an order in 2015, U.S. immigration agents took Soto from her workplace in the city of Madera and held her for deportation proceedings.

Her case was tried in the immigration court in San Francisco, and the city public defender’s office has represented her.

“I feel so happy and so moved. ... My nightmare is over,” Soto, 42, said in a statement issued by her lawyers.

“Nothing can erase the horror imposed on Ms. Soto by the Mexican authorities, but at least, she can now live freely and safely with her family, away from harm, in the United States,” said her attorney, Deputy Public Defender Hector Vega.