An illegal migrant from Mexico has been charged with murdering his girlfriend in Utah — just a week after he was deported from the US for a second time, authorities said.
Nestor Rocha-Aguayo, 24, is accused of killing 31-year-old Talia Benward and dumping her body in a remote area in Tooele, just outside Salt Lake City, last week after surveillance footage showed them arguing in a car.
The accused killer, who has a string of drug and domestic violence raps, had already been deported back to Mexico twice — most recently on Christmas Eve, following a drug-related arrest.
But he managed to illegally cross back over the US border just days before the slaying, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told The Post.
“He reentered the US a third time without admission by an immigration official,” an ICE spokesperson said.
The tattooed suspect first entered the US illegally in September 2016 when he crossed the border near Calexico, California, immigration officials said.
He came onto ICE’s radar after he was arrested and convicted on local charges in Salt Lake City in January last year.
Rocha-Aguayo was then released into federal custody and an immigration judge ordered him to be removed on April 30.
However, he managed to re-enter the US before being picked up again on local charges in Salt Lake City on Nov. 25, the feds said. He was turned over to ICE on Dec. 17 and then again booted from the country just days later.
It wasn’t immediately clear exactly when Rocha-Aguayo came back to the US for the third time.
But local authorities said he had recently contacted his girlfriend to say he was back in the state and asked her to pick him up.
Surveillance video captured Benward pulling into a gas station in West Jordan on New Year’s Day in a car she’d borrowed before Rocha-Aguayo jumped into the passenger seat, according to court documents obtained by FOX 13 Salt Lake City.
The CCTV clip appeared to show the pair “pointing at each other … as if they were arguing” before they drove towards Tooele, the court papers state.
Benward’s phone stopped tracking her location several hours later off an interstate, while Rocha-Aguayo continued on to Salt Lake City, authorities said.
The victim’s body was discovered on Saturday in a remote area near where her cell last pinged. A burn pit with partially burned remains of a car floor mat, as well as blood-stained rocks were found nearby, court papers charge.
Rocha-Aguayo was later taken into custody on a slew of charges — including aggravated murder, abuse or desecration of a dead human being and aggravated robbery.
He is being held at the Salt Lake County Metro Jail. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations have already placed yet another detainer on him, the feds said.
