Case: 16-20191 Document: 00514945099 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/06/2019 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED No. 16-20191 May 6, 2019 Conference Calendar Lyle W. Cayce Clerk UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee v. ALBIN ALEXANDER TORRES, also known as Alvin Alexander Torres, also known as Albin Alexander Torres-Menjivar, also known as Albin Torres- Menjybar, Defendant - Appellant Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas ON REMAND FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Before JOLLY, SOUTHWICK, and OLDHAM, Circuit Judges. LESLIE H. SOUTHWICK: In 2017, we summarily affirmed the defendant’s sentence for his conviction of an illegal reentry subsequent to a deportation. We relied on Fifth Circuit precedent that his prior Texas aggravated assault conviction was a crime of violence under 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), which permitted a higher maximum sentence for his illegal reentry. The Supreme Court granted the defendant’s petition for writ of certiorari, vacated our decision, and remanded for us to consider the effect of that Court’s decision that Section 16(b) was Case: 16-20191 Document: 00514945099 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/06/2019 No. 16-20191 unconstitutionally vague. Consideration given, we conclude the prior state conviction is a crime of violence under Section 16(a). AFFIRMED. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND In December 2015, Albin Alexander Torres pled guilty to violating 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) for his illegal reentry into the United States after being removed in 2012. Relevant to his sentence was a 2010 conviction for aggravated assault under a Texas statute. We will examine the Texas conviction in more detail later, but for now it suffices to say the presentence report considered that conviction to have been for an aggravated felony. The district court agreed. This is important because 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(2) increases the maximum sentence of imprisonment for a Section 1326(a) conviction to 20 years when the alien’s “removal was subsequent to a conviction for commission of an aggravated felony.” The district court did not sentence anywhere near that maximum, imposing 56 months in prison. Section 1326 is part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lists more than a score of aggravated felonies. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43). The relevant one here is “a crime of violence (as defined in section 16 of Title 18 . . .) for which the term of imprisonment [is] at least one year.” § 1101(a)(43)(F). The referenced Section 16 identifies two categories of crimes of violence: (a) an offense that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person or property of another; or (b) any other offense that is a felony and that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense. 18 U.S.C. § 16. When we first considered Torres’s argument that Section 1326(b)(2) should not apply, we applied a recent en ...
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