A Las Vegas man who tried to sneak 115 oven-ready iguanas into the US from Mexico has been sentenced to two years in prison for illegally importing the reptiles, authorities said on Thursday.
A federal judge ordered Eliodoro Soria Fonseca, 38, to serve 24 months in prison, the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of California said.
Fonseca was arrested as he tried to cross into California through the Otay Mesa port of entry, south of San Diego, in June last year with the iguana meat packed in coolers.
A search found the beheaded, skinned, and deboned bodies of 115 green iguanas weighing 72kg hidden beneath fish in the coolers.
“According to admissions in his guilty plea, the defendant imported the iguana meat for the purpose of serving it as food to humans,” the attorney’s office said in a press release.
Green iguanas are eaten in Mexico and Central America. They are enjoyed in stews or roasted and served in tacos or flautas, usually with condiments. Some recipes recommend parboiling the reptiles first.
However, iguanas are also regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). While they are not endangered, CITES say they may become threatened if trade is not tightly controlled.
Fonseca, who said he obtained the iguanas in Nayarit in western Mexico, had neither an import license from the US Fish and Wildlife Service nor any CITES permit from Mexico’s wildlife management authority.
According to sentencing documents, a researcher working for an iguana conservation program in Mexico concluded that removing more than 100 iguanas from the Nayarit area essentially “means that the local population was technically wiped out.”
The sentencing hearing noted the risk of food poisoning from iguana meat, which prosecutors said frequently carries salmonella bacteria.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing