Police chief, 20, seeking asylum

EL PASO, Texas – A young woman who received death threats after recently becoming police chief of a violence-plagued Mexican town is in the U.S and seeking asylum, Mexican and U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Marisol Valles Garcia, 20, made international headlines when she accepted the top law enforcement job in Praxedis G. Guerrero, a township near the Texas border that has been overcome by drug violence. Her predecessor was shot to death in July 2009.

Garcia is now in the U.S. and will be allowed to present her case to an immigration judge, according to a statement from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The town is in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

Drug violence has transformed the township of about 8,500 people from a string of quiet farming communities into a lawless no man’s land only about a mile from the Texas border.

Residents have said Garcia had received death threats, and the ombudsman said there may have been at least one attempt to kidnap her.

Local officials said they had given her a leave of absence from March 2 through March 7 to travel to the U.S. to tend to personal matters, but she never returned.