Would-be immigrant with long arrest record and history of expulsions is imprisoned
By EDMUND H. MAHONY
HARTFORD COURANT |
SEP 24, 2019 | 5:53 PM
A Salvadoran citizen who was deported twice after entering the country illegally and committing a long list of violent crimes was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday after sneaking back into the country a third time and sexually assaulting a child.
Federal prosecutors said Walter Arnulfo Guzman Rivas, 39, has a “lengthy and serious criminal history" and apparently was able to traverse the country and commit crimes for two decades by ignoring at least one voluntary immigration hearing that could have resulted in his deportation.
“Our immigration prosecutions will continue to focus on those individuals who illegally reenter our country after being deported following the commission of serious crimes, and, in many cases, continue to break the law upon their return," U.S. Attorney John H. Durham said Tuesday.
Working from records compiled by federal immigration and various state criminal authorities, the U.S. attorney’s office said Guzman Rivas is believed to have first crossed illegally into the country in 1997. He was picked up at the border in Texas, convicted of illegal entry, sentenced to 45 days in jail and released. He ignored a summons to an immigration hearing.
He appeared in Kentucky in 2003, married and claimed to have worked as a carpenter for construction company that was shut down for hiring undocumented immigrants. While in Kentucky, Guzman Rivas was arrested and convicted of wanton endangerment and assault.
Less than a week after the assault conviction, Guzman Rivas was in Houston, where his wife had fled to be with her parents after suffering what she later told police was “years of abuse.” He found his wife stopped at a stop sign while driving a car with their daughter and 1-year-old son.
Guzman Rivas was convicted of assaulting family members after pulling his wife from the stopped car and battering her. He struck his daughter when she tried to intervene and clipped his son in the eye with a wild punch intended for his wife, according to court records. He was sentenced to a year in jail.
He came to the attention of federal immigration authorities while in the Harris County, Texas jail. Since the authorities didn’t know his real name, Guzman Rivas was brought before a second removal hearing and in 2005 he was found to be an aggravated felon and removed to El Salvador.
Federal prosecutors said they cannot be certain when Guzman Rivas illegally entered the country again. But they learned that seven months after the deportation, he robbed several stores in Kentucky, armed with a gun and making threats of violence. He was charged with four counts of robbery, convicted of two and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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In prison, Guzman Rivas again came to the attention of immigration authorities. He did not contest deportation and was sent back to El Salvador again in 2009, shaving seven years off his 10-year sentence.
By 2011, Guzman Rivas was in Stamford, romantically involved with another woman, whom he married in 2013. Five years later, he was arrested and charged with sexual assault, illegal sexual contact with a minor and risk of injury to a minor. The complaint came from the victim’s father and was confirmed by the victim’s sister.
He was given a suspended five-year sentence after pleading guilty to one count of risk of injury to a minor — after reaching a plea bargain with federal prosecutors that gave him two years in prison and another deportation.
https://www.courant.com/news/connect...k7u-story.html
