NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 22a0280n.06 No. 21-3831 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jul 13, 2022 ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED v. ) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR ) THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF JASON LITTLE, ) OHIO Defendant-Appellant. ) ) OPINION Before: GIBBONS, ROGERS, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Jason Little illegally reentered the United States after he had been removed, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). His first removal occurred when he was a minor, and he returned to the United States to escape violence. Given these mitigating factors, the district court imposed a term of five years’ probation instead of a term of imprisonment. Little claims that even this probationary sentence was unreasonably excessive in light of his pending removal. But the district court thoroughly justified its decision under the governing sentencing factors. And nothing in the probation or immigration laws prohibits a court from imposing probation on a defendant who is subject to a removal order. We thus affirm Little’s sentence. I Little had a difficult childhood. Born in Jamaica, he never knew his father and had almost no relationship with his mother. When he was 15 years old, he testified at trial, his mother took No. 21-3831, United States v. Little him on a flight without telling him where they were going. They arrived in the Bahamas and got smuggled into the United States on a boat that landed in Florida. (According to his presentence report, he later told a probation officer that he came to the United States earlier, when he was 11.) Little did not speak English well and did not know that he was entering the United States unlawfully. Within months, his mother traveled with him to Cleveland and abandoned him there. He has not seen her since. Little lived for months going “from house to house” before immigration authorities picked him up. Trial Tr., R.52, PageID 614–15. His immigration records suggested that the police found him in a “drug house with guns, cash, and weapons,” but the district court excluded this evidence from trial as he was never charged with a crime. INS Memo, R.36-7, PageID 241. Federal immigration authorities detained him for several months. They placed him in removal proceedings during this detention. In 1997, an immigration judge ordered the government to remove a then-17-year-old Little to Jamaica. In the spring of the next year, the government paid for his commercial flight back to that country. As Little would later recall to a probation officer, he reconnected with his two siblings when he returned to Jamaica. Unfortunately, one of those siblings was subsequently shot and killed, purportedly due to his sexual orientation. Little was also shot in the leg during this violence. Little feared for his safety in Jamaica and spent much of his time in hiding. He eventually returned to northeast Ohio in mid-2020. Little’s girlfriend told a probation …
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