Deported man pleads guilty; illegally re-entered US after conviction

By David Unze
December 23, 2010

A former Stearns County resident faces up to 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to illegally re-entering the United States after being deported.

Salvador Landa-Meraz, 22, was convicted of second-degree assault in Stearns County for a 2007 incident in which a man was beaten with a baseball bat at a Rockville home.

Landa-Meraz was sentenced to 21 months in prison in mid-November 2007. He served 14 months in prison then was deported to Mexico. But he was arrested in St. Cloud in mid-July 2010 on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

A federal grand jury indicted him in September on a charge of re-entering the country after being deported.

He pleaded guilty to that charge Tuesday afternoon in Minneapolis, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Also Tuesday, another man pleaded guilty to the same charge in federal court and a third was sentenced to almost four years in prison for illegal re-entry. The charges are the result of investigations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20101223 ... 20039/1009