Everardo Donoteo-Reyes, Counterfeit Documents, New York 2019

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Everardo Donoteo-Reyes, 27, of Mexico, pleaded guilty to possession of a counterfeit social security card and alien registration card, and illegal re-entry after deportation.

Donoteo-Reyes faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is scheduled to be sentenced on December 16, 2019, before U.S. District Judge Charles J. Siragusa.

The charges stem from Donoteo-Reyes’s repeated attempts to re-enter the United States after being ordered removed in 2016. He was administratively arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), in Gretna, Louisiana, and ordered removed from the United States in October 2016.

On March 1, 2017, United States Border Patrol encountered Donoteo-Reyes in the United States and administratively arrested him in Laredo, Texas. Two days later, on March 3, 2017, Donoteo-Reyes pleaded guilty to entering the United States unlawfully and was sentenced to 15 days confinement. He was physically removed from the United States to Mexico on March 15, 2017.

Donoteo-Reyes was once again advised that he could not re-enter the United States without permission. However, he was arrested by the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office on New York State criminal charges on May 24, 2018. The sheriff’s office sent Donoteo-Reyes’s fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which determined that he had no valid immigration status and was again illegally present in the United States.

During the course of an investigation into the defendant’s missing girlfriend and her son, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office located fraudulent documents belonging to Donoteo-Reyes, including a counterfeit alien registration card bearing defendant’s photograph, as well as a fraudulent social security card.

“Although a violent crime, such as that to which this defendant pled guilty in New York State Court, may not be more egregious simply because it was committed by an illegal alien as opposed to a United States citizen or anyone else,” stated U.S. S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. “what is particularly frustrating is that the defendant should never have had the opportunity to commit such a heinous crime in the first place. Simply put, the defendant should not have been in the United States, and the public needs to recognize that our immigration laws exist not only to punish those, like this defendant, who violate them but to protect those, like his girlfriend and her son, who do not.”

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