United States v. Andres Gomez


Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 1 of 19 [PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT ________________________ No. 19-10609 ________________________ D.C. Docket Nos. 9:18-cr-80181-RLR-1, 9:16-cr-80098-RLR-1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, versus ANDRES GOMEZ, a.k.a. Andres Gomez Avellaneda, Defendant - Appellant. ________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ________________________ (April 14, 2020) Before ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Defendant Andres Gomez challenges the district court’s order that sentenced him to a 46-month term of incarceration (for illegally re-entering the United States) Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 2 of 19 and a 21-month term (for violating the terms of his supervised release), with each sentence to run consecutively to one another and to a separate, undischarged eight- year state prison sentence. Gomez contends that this sentence is unreasonable because the district court failed to properly consider and weigh the sentencing factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). After careful review of the record, we affirm Gomez’s sentences. I. Factual and Procedural Background Gomez’s appeal is a consolidation of two federal actions. The first, Case No. 9:16-cr-80098-RLR-1, is the case against Gomez for violating the terms of a previously imposed term of supervised release. The second, Case No. 9:18-cr- 80181-RLR-1, is the case against Gomez for illegally re-entering the United States in 2017 or 2018. We discuss each in turn before turning to the merits of this appeal. a. Gomez’s Violation of Supervised Release Gomez, a Mexican citizen, has an extensive history of illegally coming into the United States. He was voluntarily removed from the country in 1998. He subsequently re-entered the United States without authorization and was again removed in 2002. But he later sneaked back into the United States without authorization for (at least) the third time, and in May 2016 was arrested in Florida on state charges. 2 Case: 19-10609 Date Filed: 04/14/2020 Page: 3 of 19 The May 2016 arrest put Gomez back on U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (“ICE”) radar, and on June 23, 2016, he was indicted for having unlawfully re-entered the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(1). Gomez pled guilty on August 10, 2016, and was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, followed by a two-year term of supervised release. The district court’s sentence contained the standard mandatory conditions of supervised release, including a prohibition against committing another federal, state, or local crime. Because of Gomez’s immigration status, his sentence also included a special condition of supervised release, which required him to be surrendered to ICE’s custody for removal proceedings at the completion of his term of imprisonment. And while Gomez’s sentence contained a standard condition of supervised release that he report to his designated U.S. Probation Office within 72 hours of his release from prison and within the first fifteen days of each month, Gomez was not required to report to Probation so long as he resided outside of the United States. If ...

Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals