ICE fugitive who escaped from JFK is diplomat’s son
A man who dodged deportation by running through Kennedy Airport, setting off a nationwide manhunt, is the son of a foreign diplomat, the Daily News has learned.
The revelation about Mohamadou Mbacke’s parentage comes as Brooklyn Federal prosecutors get ready for jury selection in his escape trial.
Mbacke, 31, came to the United States from Senegal in 2005 on a temporary visa and was being shipped back home after being convicted of several weapons-related charges in Michigan when he took off.
Federal officials opted for a commercial flight to Africa, “based, in part, on the defendant’s father’s status as a Senegalese diplomat,” federal prosecutors said, without revealing his father’s identity.
Mbacke, 31, and three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took a plane from Detroit to New York on March 27, and took off his handcuffs before they left the Motor City, authorities said.
During their layover at JFK, they ate Buffalo Wild Wings and Mbacke flew the coop.
In what prosecutors are calling a coincidence, Mbacke, inset, spotted a cousin eight rows away at an airport gate. The agents gave him permission to chat with his relative and Mbacke bolted when he noticed his ICE escorts were not facing him.
He initially got lost in the terminal, but found the exit and flagged down a taxi. The fugitive used the cabbie’s phone to arrange for a friend to pick him up at a gas station and pay his $60 fare, prosecutors said.
Three days later, Mbacke was picked up 800 miles west at a Chicago Starbucks, sporting shades and a lame fake ID, court papers said. It’s not clear how he blew into the Windy City, but a confidential source tipped off ICE, saying he was at the coffee shop near Union Station, according to court documents. When two agents asked Mbacke for identification, he handed over a driver’s license of someone 11 years younger, 40 pounds lighter and several inches shorter, authorities said. Although he initially tried to say he was from Ecuador, Mbacke fessed up, saying, “I’m the guy you are looking for.” Prosecutors claim Mbacke quipped he was “tired of running.” Mbacke was granted a visa in 2005 because of his relation to a “foreign government official,” prosecutors said. He lived with his wife and children in Detroit, where he worked in a bakery.
By 2017, he had several weapons-related convictions in Michigan and faced a removal order.
The same year, he was arrested for criminal sexual conduct, but was acquitted of those charges in January. After that, he remained in ICE’s hands.
Jan Rostal, Mbacke’s lawyer, declined to comment on the case. But a defense filing says Mbacke didn’t get any explanation as to why he was still being held after he was cleared in the sex case. The paperwork also claimed airport surveillance video of Mbacke and the federal agents didn’t give any indication he was “in custody, much less lawful custody.”
An ICE spokeswoman declined to comment.