A 20-year-old Mexican National has been sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty earlier this year to trafficking more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana from Mexico into the United States.
Jorge Monjaraz-Perez appeared Thursday before U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., who sentenced him to 200 months in prison. Monjaraz-Perez will face deportation once he completes his prison sentence, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas stated in a media release.
“In handing down the sentence, the court noted Monjaraz-Perez coordinated with a drug trafficking organization and was also manager in that organization, facilitating the trafficking of the drug loads in numerous different ways. Judge Rodriguez further noted that this wasn’t aberrant behavior and that Monjaraz-Perez trafficked a large amount of marijuana over several different events,” the media release read.
At the Jan. 13 hearing where Monjarez-Perez entered a guilty plea, he admitted he conspired with a drug trafficking organization to move at least 1,886 kilograms of marijuana or 4,157 pounds of marijuana.
Monjaraz-Perez also acknowledged running a marijuana stash house in Brownsville and that he participated in at least seven drug trafficking events. Law enforcement seized all the marijuana, each ranging between 91 kilograms and 528 kilograms, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Three others, Reynaldo Gilberto Padilla-Torres, Jose Valles-Resendez, and Sergio Gonzalez-Cruz, also accused in the same case entered guilty pleas to drug smuggling charges.
Padilla Torres, Valles-Resendez and Gonzalez-Cruz were each sentenced earlier this year to 24 months in federal prison, federal court documents reflect.
According to a June 29, 2021 criminal complaint, Monjaraz-Perez and the three others were spotted by U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling the Brownsville area, near River Bend Resort, running north across U.S. 281 Military Highway. The agents saw one person run into a sorghum field carrying what was suspected to be a bundle of marijuana, the complaint stated.
The man was taken into custody and as the agents continued to search the sorghum field, they found seven additional bundles of marijuana, which totaled over 200 pounds of marijuana.
According to the complaint, Monjaraz-Perez and the three others admitted to smuggling the marijuana from Mexico into the U.S.
The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration conducted the investigation with the assistance of Border Patrol and Texas Department of Public Safety. Assistant U.S. Attorney David A. Lindenmuth is prosecuting the case.
___
(c) 2022 The Brownsville Herald
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
