United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 17-1065 ___________________________ United States of America lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee v. Eleazar Rios Araujo lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant ____________ Appeal from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota - St. Paul ____________ Submitted: December 13, 2017 Filed: February 23, 2018 [Unpublished] ____________ Before WOLLMAN, LOKEN, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges. ____________ PER CURIAM. Eleazar Rios Araujo, a Mexican citizen, pleaded guilty to Reentry of Removed Alien, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). The district court1 sentenced Araujo to 1 The Honorable Patrick J. Schiltz, United States District Judge for the District of Minnesota. forty-five months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release. Araujo appeals, arguing that his sentence is substantively unreasonable. We affirm. As Araujo’s criminal history is relevant to this appeal, we briefly recount that history. In 1994, Araujo was convicted of three California robbery-related offenses. Because at the time of those convictions he was illegally within the United States, Araujo was deported to Mexico following his release from incarceration. In 1999, after Araujo illegally reentered the United States, he was convicted of two counts of Illegal Entry by an Alien and was sentenced to thirty months of imprisonment. Following that sentence, he was again deported to Mexico in 2001. Sometime later, Araujo again illegally reentered the United States, as evinced by one arrest in 2006 and another arrest in 2009, both in Minnesota but neither of which appears to have been prosecuted. In 2015, Araujo was arrested and pleaded guilty to a Minnesota drug-related offense. Based on that arrest, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement learned of Araujo’s illegal presence and arrested him for the offense underlying this appeal. Araujo was indicted and pleaded guilty to the underlying offense: Reentry of Removed Alien, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). The maximum term of imprisonment for the offense was twenty years, and Araujo’s advisory sentencing range under the United States Sentencing Guidelines was fifty-seven to seventy-one months of imprisonment. The district court sentenced Araujo to forty-five months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release. Araujo timely appeals. Araujo argues that his sentence is substantively unreasonable because it is “greater than necessary” to accomplish certain penological purposes, in contravention of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a). Specifically, he contends that the district court gave: (1) too much weight to his guideline range, which he argues was unreasonably increased -2- based on an enhancement for his 1994 and 1999 convictions;2 and (2) not enough weight to the “staleness” or “age” of those prior convictions, to the supposed flaws in the guidelines calculations for Reentry of Removed Alien convictions, and to Araujo’s history and characteristics, specifically his difficult childhood. As Araujo challenges the substantive reasonableness of his sentence, we apply the “deferential abuse-of-discretion standard.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 41 (2007); United States v. Feemster, 572 F.3d 455, 461 (8th Cir. 2009) (en banc) (citations omitted). “A district court abuses its discretion when it (1) fails to ...
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