An illegal immigrant from Mexico who was caught in Iowa has been sentenced to a year and a half in federal prison. On November 30th of 2009 Juan Cardona-Tinajero was convicted of a drug crime in Iowa District Court in Woodbury County and deported. This past May Cardona-Tinajero was a passenger in a vehicle that was stopped in western Iowa by a state trooper and he’s been in federal custody ever since. He’s now 23 years old. This summer he admitted to reentering the country illegally. In late November he was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison.

Forty-seven-year-old Javier Garnica-Rodriguez, a Mexican citizen, was sentenced to six months in federal prison. Garnica-Rodriguez was being held in the Webster County Jail for driving without a license when federal authorities picked him up. Another man, 38-year-old Jose Bautista-Perez of Mexico, has also been sentenced to six months in federal prison. He was caught by Homeland Security agents doing a records check to see if deported immigrants had returned to the U.S. Both Bautista-Perez and Garnica-Rodriguez had been deported once before.

(Radio Iowa)