The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, announced this Saturday that the United States has proceeded with the deportation of the former Minister of the Interior and former president of the National Assembly, José Serrano. Upon his arrival in Ecuador, the former high-ranking official will be transferred to prison in the coming hours as part of the case opened for the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.
"We said it, we did it. José Serrano, interior minister of Correa, new guest of El Encuentro," the Ecuadorian president pointed out on his social media, where he shared photographs of the former minister inside an airplane, escorted by ICE agents (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), heading to Ecuador.
Likewise, Noboa has sent a direct message to former president Rafael Correa, whom he has politically held responsible and warned of a future arrest. "It's your turn now," he threatened.
The former minister was under immigration custody in the United States and was arrested a year ago in the state of Florida, in the southeast of the country, for exceeding the allowed time on his visa. Serrano had been residing in U.S. territory since 2021, until in May of this year a judge definitively rejected his asylum request.
José Serrano is among the seven suspects identified by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office in the investigation into the murder of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. Prosecutor Ana Hidalgo charged the seven investigated on August 8 as presumed responsible for the crime, carried out by hitmen, in which the accused would have intervened as intellectual authors.
Villavicencio was murdered on August 9, 2023, after leaving a campaign rally in Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, an attack that shocked the country and marked the electoral process.