Mexican national pleads guilty to immigration violations in Texas

LUFKIN, Texas — A Mexican national illegally present in the Eastern District of Texas pleaded guilty to immigration violations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced on May 13, 2026.

The defendant admitted to reentering the United States after prior deportation, a felony under 8 U.S.C. § 1326, and to other immigration offenses charged in the case. The plea occurred in federal district court as one of the initial convictions secured under Operation Take Back America, an enforcement initiative targeting undocumented noncitizens with criminal records or prior removals.

The single defendant now faces a statutory maximum of up to 20 years in federal prison, depending on criminal-history enhancements, followed by supervised release and almost certain deportation upon completion of any sentence. The plea agreement has not yet produced a sentencing date.

The conviction shifts the defendant from unlawful presence to a formal federal criminal record. Sentencing will occur under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines that treat illegal reentry as a base offense level of 8, with increases for prior aggravated felonies or multiple removals.

Once sentenced, Immigration and Customs Enforcement must take custody within 30 days of release from Bureau of Prisons control under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Downstream, the Eastern District of Texas U.S. Attorney’s Office must now prepare presentence reports and recommend sentences within 70 days of the plea. The case also requires the Executive Office for Immigration Review to schedule removal proceedings that cannot legally be canceled once a final criminal sentence is imposed.

Operation Take Back America’s early results will be aggregated into quarterly enforcement statistics that Congress uses to evaluate Department of Homeland Security funding requests for detention beds and deportation flights.

This marks one of the first publicly announced guilty pleas tied directly to Operation Take Back America since the initiative’s launch. The Department of Justice has stated the operation prioritizes noncitizens with prior criminal convictions or repeated illegal entries, consistent with enforcement priorities set in executive orders issued in January 2025.

Similar single-defendant immigration pleas have been announced monthly in the Eastern District of Texas throughout 2025 and 2026.