MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Friday that she expects boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr to be deported to Mexico to serve a sentence for arms trafficking after being detained in Los Angeles by U.S. immigration authorities.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Chavez was determined to be in the country illegally last week after he made fraudulent statements on a 2024 application for permanent residence.

Sheinbaum, in her regular morning press conference, said Mexico has had a warrant for his arrest since 2023, stemming from an investigation initiated in 2019. She added that Mexico had failed to bring him into custody over that period as Chavez Jr had spent most of his time in the United States.

“So that there is a deportation and that he can serve the sentence, that’s the process the attorney general’s office is working on,” Sheinbaum told reporters.

On Thursday, Homeland Security said the 39-year-old boxer, son of Mexican world champion fighter Julio Cesar Chavez, is suspected of having ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, which Washington has designated a foreign terrorist organization.

A lawyer for him called the allegations “outrageous.”

His wife, Frida Munoz Chavez, was previously married to the son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. The son, Edgar, was assassinated in 2008.

Sheinbaum said she did not know if Chavez Jr had links to the Sinaloa Cartel.

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(Reporting by Mexico City bureau; editing by Stephen Eisenhammer)