Deported ‘affluenza’ teen booked into Texas detention center

Uniformed Mexican immigration agents put Couch on a commercial flight from Mexico City to Texas on Thursday morning.

The mom and son pair fled Texas home in December after video surfaced allegedly showing the teen playing beer pong with friends – a direct violation of his court-ordered probation.

Ethan Couch will be held in a juvenile detention center in Fort Worth, where a juvenile judge will hold a hearing to decide whether to continue to hold him there, book him in an adult jail or let him go, according to Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson.

“He’s certainly capable of understanding now what’s going on, and I’d feel better if he was there (in an adult jail)”, Anderson said.

Couch, who had been on the lam in Mexico with his mother Tonya whenhe was caught last month, officially dropped his appeal against deportation on Wednesday. Yet his attorney Scott Brown argued that the teen may have been forced to go to Mexico against his will. In turn, Brown argued to stop the hearing, claiming there was no proof that Couch “voluntarily absented himself”, indicating that Tonya Couch may be exclusively responsibled for the teen’s disappearance. Video released by Mexican immigration officials showed Couch wearing a bluish camouflage-print hoodie as he was escorted out of the detention center and onto the plane by four agents. Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison term, but the court handed him a surprise sentence of mental health treatment and a decade of probation. Couch will be screened for any medical issues and officially assigned to a housing unit in the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center. She was released on bond this month after being fitted with an electronic ankle Global Positioning System monitor.

If he is found to have violated the probation deal, Couch faces about four months behind bars.

Couch reportedly formally chose to drop the appeal on Monday.

Instead, he was sentenced to 10 years probation, which he violated in December when he was seen at a party where alcohol was served, and he missed a mandatory check-in.

Her son was 16 years old on June 15, 2013, when he drove a pickup into a group of pedestrians on a road in Burleson, south of Fort Worth, killing all four and hitting a parked vehicle.

Couch’s attorney in Texas didn’t return messages seeking comment Thursday afternoon.

“Now that Ethan is back in Tarrant County and will be personally present in court at the upcoming hearing on the State’s Motion to Transfer, we anticipate that the Court will lawfully transfer his probation to an appropriate Tarrant County District Court with adult criminal jurisdiction”.

Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson reported from Mexico City.