Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-18-03716/USCOURTS-ca7-18-03716-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Carlos A. Vasquez-Abarca
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 18-3716 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

CARLOS A. VASQUEZ-ABARCA, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Western Division. 

No. 3:17-cr-50079-1 — Philip G. Reinhard, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED NOVEMBER 7, 2019 — DECIDED JANUARY 9, 2020 

____________________ 

Before HAMILTON, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. 

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge. Defendant Carlos VasquezAbarca appeals his sentence for reentering the United States 

illegally after a prior deportation following a felony conviction, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). The district court imposed a sentence of 72 months in prison, about twice the 

range of 30 to 37 months in prison advised by the Sentencing 

Guidelines. The sentence was well within the statutory limits 

and was a reasonable exercise of the judge’s discretion under 

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18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) and United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 

(2005). The judge here also gave a sufficient explanation for 

the decision, see Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 (2007), 

based primarily on Vasquez-Abarca’s criminal history and the 

fact that a previous sentence of 57 months for the same crime 

had not deterred him from committing the crime again. We 

affirm the sentence. 

I. Factual and Procedural Background 

Vasquez-Abarca’s parents brought him to the United 

States from Mexico in 1986, when he was about five years old. 

He has been deported from the United States on three prior 

occasions, in 1997, 2005, and 2015. His first encounter with 

law enforcement in the United States came in 1995—at the age 

of 14—when he was arrested for having sex with a 12-yearold. For reasons that are not clear, Vasquez-Abarca evidently 

told Illinois authorities that he was either 16 or 17 years old. 

Based on that age difference, he was convicted of a felony sex 

offense in June 1996. He was imprisoned in Illinois and then 

deported to Mexico for the first time on July 25, 1997.

Soon after that deportation, Vasquez-Abarca reentered the 

United States illegally. Less than two months later, he was arrested in Chicago for disorderly conduct. (That charge was 

dismissed, apparently without any immigration consequences.) In July 2001, he was still living in Illinois and was 

convicted of failing to register as a sex offender. Later in 2001, 

federal immigration agents arrested Vasquez-Abarca. He was 

charged in the Northern District of Illinois with reentering the 

country illegally in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a). He pleaded 

guilty and was sentenced in 2002 to 57 months in prison, the 

lower limit of the guideline range. After serving that sentence, 

he was deported for a second time on December 2, 2005. 

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No. 18-3716 3

Vasquez-Abarca entered the United States again in June 

2006. In the following years, he committed about a dozen 

driving-related offenses in Illinois and Georgia, including 

various moving violations and driving without a valid license. His repeated traffic violations culminated in August 

2012 in two felony convictions in Georgia and a one-year term 

of imprisonment. On December 19, 2013, shortly after his release from a Georgia prison, he was sentenced in the Northern 

District of Illinois to an additional 24 months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release on the 2002 conviction for illegal reentry. After serving that supervised release 

revocation sentence, he was deported for a third time on May 

19, 2015. 

Vasquez-Abarca committed the crime of conviction here 

when he illegally entered the United States again around January 2016. He moved to Rochelle, Illinois, where he found 

work remodeling homes. But he still had an outstanding Illinois warrant from 2007 for giving the police a fake name and 

driver’s license. He was arrested on that warrant on April 8, 

2017. That October he was convicted of the felony of obstructing justice. The state court sentenced him to time served, but 

Vasquez-Abarca was then taken into federal custody and indicted again for illegally reentering the United States after a 

prior deportation following a felony conviction, in violation 

of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(1).

Vasquez-Abarca ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge. 

At the sentencing hearing, the government asked for a sentence within the guideline range of 30 to 37 months. The defense requested a below-guideline sentence of 24 months, arguing that Vasquez-Abarca’s driving violations stemmed 

from his lack of legal residency status. The district court, 

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however, imposed a sentence of 72 months. The statute authorized a sentence of up to 20 years. 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(2). The 

only questions on appeal are whether the district court gave a 

sufficient explanation for the 72-month sentence and whether 

the sentence was substantively reasonable.1

II. Analysis 

We review the substantive reasonableness of a sentence 

for abuse of discretion. Gall, 552 U.S. at 46; United States v. 

Carter, 538 F.3d 784, 789 (7th Cir. 2008). The district court must 

explain the sentence in terms of the factors set forth in 18 

U.S.C. § 3553(a). See 18 U.S.C. § 3553(c). The judge “should set 

forth enough to satisfy the appellate court that he has considered the parties’ arguments and has a reasoned basis for exercising his own legal decisionmaking authority.” Rita v. United 

States, 551 U.S. 338, 356 (2007). The explanation need not be 

“exhaustive” but must be “adequate to allow for meaningful 

appellate review.” Carter, 538 F.3d at 789 (quotation omitted). 

The court here gave three reasons for the above-guideline sentence: Vasquez-Abarca’s extensive criminal history, the need 

to deter him from further illegal reentries, and protecting the 

public from the perils of unlicensed driving.2

 1 The indictment cited 8 U.S.C. § 1326(b)(1), which authorizes a penalty of only 10 years’ imprisonment. But since Vasquez-Abarca’s sexual 

abuse conviction was an aggravated felony, he was eligible for a higher 

maximum of 20 years under § 1326(b)(2). The Supreme Court has held 

that § 1326(b)(2) sets forth a sentencing factor, not a separate crime, so it 

need not be specified in the indictment. See Almendarez-Torres v. United 

States, 523 U.S. 224, 226–27 (1998). 

2 The court rejected Vasquez-Abarca’s request for a downward departure based on cultural assimilation and time served in state custody. He 

does not raise those issues on appeal. 

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In United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220 (2005), the Supreme 

Court remedied the Sixth Amendment problems with mandatory Sentencing Guidelines by making them advisory. “Mandatory” and “advisory” serve as shorthand descriptions of 

different standards of review for non-guideline sentences 

(“departures” under the Guidelines, and often called “variances” after Booker). Since Booker, the Supreme Court and 

lower federal courts have worked to maintain an appropriate 

and constitutional balance that keeps the Guidelines advisory 

yet still important. 

On the “advisory” side of the balance, the Supreme Court 

has taught that sentencing judges have discretion under 

§ 3553(a) to give non-guideline sentences for reasons specific 

to the defendant or based on policy disagreements with the 

Guidelines. Pepper v. United States, 562 U.S. 476, 501 (2011); 

Kimbrough v. United States, 552 U.S. 85 (2007); Gall, 552 U.S. at 

50–51. Sentencing judges actually err if they presume that a 

guideline sentence will be reasonable. Rita, 551 U.S. at 351; 

Gall, 552 U.S. at 50. The now-advisory Guidelines also are not 

subject to vagueness challenges. Beckles v. United States, 137 S. 

Ct. 886 (2017). 

On the “important” side, the sentencing judge must calculate the guideline range correctly, Gall, 552 U.S. at 49, and failure to do so will be a “plain error” that will often need to be 

corrected on appeal even if no objection was made in the district court. Rosales-Mireles v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 1897 

(2018); Molina-Martinez v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1338 (2016). 

Similarly, because of the presumed “anchoring” effect of the 

advisory Guidelines, the sentencing judge may not apply 

harsher Guidelines adopted after the offense, Peugh v. United 

States, 569 U.S. 530 (2013), even though the judge is free to 

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consider later, harsher Guidelines by treating them as giving 

different advice, id. at 549; see also id. at 558 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (district judge remains free to consider range produced under amended Guidelines). 

Key to this balance are the procedural steps of requiring a 

correct calculation of the Guidelines and having reviewing 

courts expect more of an explanation for a non-guideline sentence than for a within-guideline sentence. See Peugh, 569 U.S. 

at 542. As the Court explained in Gall, “a major departure 

should be supported by a more significant justification than a 

minor one.” 552 U.S. at 50. If a judge “decides that an outsideGuidelines sentence is warranted, he must consider the extent 

of the deviation and ensure that the justification is sufficiently 

compelling to support the degree of the variance.” Id. Nevertheless, the sentencing court may still explain the sentence in 

terms of the statutory factors alone: “the sentencing court 

need not frame its explanation of a sentence in terms of a departure from the guidelines range.” United States v. Kuczora, 

910 F.3d 904, 908 (7th Cir. 2018). 

Applying these general principles to this case, we conclude that the district court sufficiently explained the 72-

month sentence and that the sentence was not substantively 

unreasonable for Vasquez-Abarca. First, the court cited 

Vasquez-Abarca’s extensive criminal history. See 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3553(a)(1) (directing courts to consider “the history and 

characteristics of the defendant”). The court correctly observed that Vasquez-Abarca illegally reentered after each of 

his three deportations. The court also noted that he had six 

prior felony convictions. Notably, Vasquez-Abarca’s criminal 

history calculation under the Guidelines did not fully reflect 

this history. The 2006 illegal reentry was never charged, and 

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two of the felony convictions were more than fifteen years old 

and did not count under the Guidelines. See U.S.S.G. 

§ 4A1.2(e)(1) (time limit for counting prior convictions); 

§ 4A1.3 (encouraging upward departures if criminal history 

category substantially underrepresents seriousness of full history or likelihood that defendant will commit other crimes). 

The district court was entitled to consider the defendant’s full 

criminal history and to impose a sentence tailored to his record. 

Second, the district court focused in particular on 

Vasquez-Abarca’s prior 57-month sentence for the same 

crime: illegal reentry after deportation after a criminal conviction. The court emphasized that the 57-month sentence had 

not deterred him from committing the same crime again. One 

key purpose of sentencing under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(B) is 

“to afford adequate deterrence.” A sentencing court may consider previous sentences in assessing the level of needed deterrence. United States v. Sanchez-Lopez, 858 F.3d 1064, 1068 

(7th Cir. 2017) (“The district court acted well within its discretion in concluding that [the defendant] could best be deterred 

by serving a longer sentence than he received the last time he 

committed the same offense.”); see also U.S.S.G. § 4A1.3. 

Vasquez-Abarca’s own statements lend support to the deterrence rationale. In his brief allocution, he emphasized his desire to remain in the United States, and earlier he had told the 

probation office that he did not think he had done anything 

wrong. The judge reasonably concluded that a longer sentence was needed to deter future reentries. We see nothing unreasonable in the judgment to move from the prior sentence 

of 57 months to 72 months. Under the Guidelines, that increase was comparable to a one-step increase in a defendant’s 

criminal history category. 

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Third, the district court noted the danger that drivers 

without valid licenses and insurance pose to the public. The 

court also speculated that, since Vasquez-Abarca lacked legal 

status in the United States, he would be more likely to flee in 

the event of a traffic stop, further endangering the public. 

Vasquez-Abarca responds, reasonably enough, that he did 

not flee when the police stopped him in April 2017. Nevertheless, the court’s general concern that unlicensed drivers endanger the public was not unreasonable. Cf. Reitz v. Mealey, 

314 U.S. 33, 36 (1941) (upholding a license requirement based 

on the state’s need “to insure competence and care on the part 

of its licensees and to protect others using the highway”). Different judges might view the factor differently, but given 

Vasquez-Abarca’s extensive history of unlicensed driving, the 

district court did not abuse its discretion in thinking a higher 

sentence might contribute to protection of the public. See 18 

U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(C) (citing the need “to protect the public 

from further crimes of the defendant”); United States v. Jackson, 547 F.3d 786, 793–94 (7th Cir. 2008) (upholding aboveguideline sentence based in part on convictions for driving 

without a license, which showed “a flouting of the legal requirements of driving and a pattern of disregard for the punishment imposed by courts for those transgressions” and contributed to pattern of “disrespect for the law”). 

The district court adequately explained the sentence, 

which was not substantively unreasonable in this case. 

AFFIRMED. 

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