United States v. Ernesto Rivas-Gonzalez

The United States appeals a decision of the district court to depart downward by eight levels in sentencing an alien who was charged with illegal reentry after having been previously removed. We have jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 1291 and we reverse.

I

Ernesto Rivas-Gonzalez (“Rivas”) is a forty-five year old Mexican national who first entered the United States illegally in 1979 at age twenty-one. On January 8, 1993, almost fifteen years after his first illegal entry, he was sentenced in state court in Yakima, Washington, to a prison term of one year and one day on a drug-related violation. He served the sentence and was thereafter deported to Mexico on July 24,1993.

Rivas has admitted that soon after he was deported to Mexico in 1993, he reentered the United States illegally without inspection and began living again in Yakima, Washington. There, he met an American citizen named Terry Rivas, whom he married on February 12, 1995. Rivas and his wife later had two American-born daughters.

The government learned of Rivas’s illegal status from an anonymous source. Rivas was taken into custody on September 12, 2002. He was charged with reentering the United States without…