By HILDY MEDINA
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER

Andrew Luster may have been captured in Mexico and quickly deported back to California, but Santa Barbara law enforcement officials have had a hard time trying to retrieve fugitives from south of the border.

About a half-dozen suspects in Santa Barbara homicides, five of them Mexican nationals, are suspected to be living in Mexico.

Mario Soto Taboada, a Mexican native who is suspected of stabbing his young wife to death in Santa Barbara, is believed to be in Mexico and has evaded capture for more than a decade.

On the night of Feb. 28, 1992, Mr. Taboada allegedly waited in his truck for his wife, Esther Bueno Taboada, to finish work.

He then stabbed her in the neck, police say, and fled.

They believe Mr. Taboada headed south across the border.

In 1997, Santa Barbara Police Detective Roger Aceves went to Mexico with an arrest warrant for murder, but was not able to find Mr. Taboada.

Detectives with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department and Santa Barbara Police Department occasionally make trips south of the border with arrest warrants in hand.

But even if they locate their suspects, getting them back to the United States is not easy.

"We have had investigations where we had to go south of the border and had to carry out extraditions," said county Sheriff's Department Sgt. Chris Pappas. "But it certainly took some doing and effort on our part to accomplish the extraditions."

Even more frustrating for law enforcement officials is that the most dangerous criminals are often times the most difficult to extradite.

The Mexican government does not extradite in death penalty cases, or in many cases where the suspect may serve a life sentence, because it considers those punishments unconstitutional.

There are currently several resolutions in both houses of Congress asking the Bush administration to renegotiate the extradition treaty. But even the backers of these resolutions say the changes are not likely to happen any time soon.