Opinion ID: 803070
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Arrest and Guilty Plea

Text: Defendant Jimenez is a citizen of Mexico. In 1994, Jimenez was convicted of felony drug trafficking offenses in California state court and served over a year in prison. In 1996, Jimenez was removed from the United States and then removed again in 1998 and 2007. After his 2007 removal, Jimenez illegally reentered the United States in 2008 by walking across the border into Texas. In December 2010, a police officer in Gwinnett County, Georgia, observed a passenger sitting inside a vehicle parked in a motel parking lot. When the officer asked the passenger whether he was a guest at the motel, the passenger indicated that his friend was reserving a room. Because the officer smelled marijuana, he asked the passenger for identification and permission to search the vehicle. The passenger consented to a search. 2 At this point, Defendant Jimenez approached the vehicle. Jimenez told the officer that he was driving the vehicle, but it belonged to a friend. Jimenez also consented to a search of the vehicle. During the search, officers discovered one firearm inside the pocket of a jacket lying on the driver’s side of the vehicle and another firearm under the passenger seat. Jimenez was charged with reentering the United States after being deported, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) and (b)(2) (Count 1), and possessing a firearm as an illegal alien, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5) (Count 2). Jimenez pled guilty to both counts. At the plea hearing, Jimenez admitted that the gun found in the jacket was his, that he obtained the gun from a friend who was returning to Mexico and that he had the gun “because [he] was thinking about selling it” because he “didn’t have money to pay [his] rent.”