Teen's mother deported to U.S.

MEXICO CITY - The Texas teenager known for using an "affluenza" defense in a fatal drunken-driving accident likely won't return to the United States anytime soon because of a Mexican judge's decision to delay his deportation Wednesday, but a Mexico immigration official said his mother was being flown to Los Angeles.

Richard Hunter, chief deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service in South Texas, said during a news conference in Houston that a three-day court injunction granted to Ethan Couch will likely take at least two weeks to resolve.

Later in the day, however, the teen's mother, Tonya Couch, was put on a plane to be flown from Guadalajara to Los Angeles, an official with Mexico's National Immigration Institute told the Associated Press.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the woman was sent to the United States because immigration authorities did not receive a judge's injunction like the one that temporarily blocked her son's deportation.

Ethan Couch remained in the custody of immigration officials in Guadalajara.

Authorities believe the 18-year-old Couch, who was sentenced only to probation for the 2013 wreck in Texas, fled to Mexico with his mother in November as prosecutors investigated whether he had violated his probation.

Both were taken into custody Monday after authorities said a phone call for pizza led to their capture in the resort city of Puerto Vallarta.

The ruling earlier Wednesday by the Mexican court gives a judge three days to decide whether the younger Couch has grounds to challenge his deportation based on arguments that kicking him out of the country would violate his rights.

Couch was driving drunk and speeding near Fort Worth in June 2013, when he crashed into a disabled sport-utility vehicle, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his pickup truck.