OKLAHOMA CITY – Regardless of who occupies the White House, undocumented aliens continue to enter the United States without authorization. Thirteen indictments against Hispanic nationals have been filed in Oklahoma City and Tulsa federal district courts in recent months.
Several of the defendants have been deported from the U.S. multiple times – one man has been removed from the U.S. 10 times – and some were arrested on serious criminal charges.
• Luis Raul Chavez-Garcia, alias Luis Garcia, was arrested in Oklahoma on Jan. 19 and indicted March 2 in Oklahoma’s Western District Federal Court on a charge of illegal re-entry after removal from the U.S. Chavez-Garcia was previously deported on Sept. 28, 2017, and again on Feb. 6, 2019, records show.
• Saul Gomez-Gomez was deported from the U.S. in August 2012. After re-entering the country illegally, he was charged in Texas County in 2019 with domestic assault and battery by strangulation and disrupting an emergency telephone call. He entered the state prison system on Dec. 10, 2020, to serve a three-year prison sentence. A federal grand jury in Oklahoma City indicted Gomez-Gomez, 37, last month and he is scheduled to appear in Western District federal court on April 12.
• Higinio Carrillo Garcia, alias “Pedro Garcia” and “Adan Torres,” 38, was arrested in Oklahoma last September, two years after he was deported from the U.S. He pleaded guilty last November and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron to six months in federal prison.
• Juan Hernandez-Granados, 45, was indicted Feb. 19, 2021, on a charge of re-entry of a removed alien.
He was previously deported from the U.S. on Jan. 7, 2005; April 10, 2008; April 12, 2008; March 1, 2010; June 26, 2010; Sept. 3, 2010; Oct. 2, 2010; Oct. 13, 2010; July 20, 2011; and Feb. 10, 2015. The defendant, also known as “Luis Hernandez,” “Juan Granados” and “Carlos Hernandez-Granados,” was found to be in the United States again without authorization on April 24, 2020.
Hernandez-Granados pleaded no-contest in Oklahoma County in 2014 to a felony charge of being in possession of a stolen vehicle and received a five-year suspended sentence.
He was back in the Oklahoma County jail last April when he was spotted by a deportation officer assigned to the OKC office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who placed an immigration detainer on Hernandez-Granados.
• Edgar Raul Cota-Soto was deported from the U.S. on Jan. 28, 2020, but “was found to be” in western Oklahoma four months later, without the consent of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Cota-Soto was indicted Feb. 19, 2021, on a charge of re-entry of a removed alien and is scheduled to appear in OKC’s federal district court on April 12.
• Damian Hernandez-Galvan, deported from the U.S. five times already, was indicted last month in Oklahoma’s Western District federal court on a charge of illegal re-entry after removal from the United States. He was previously deported in 2008, 2011, 2012, and twice in 2016 (April 9 and May 3).
A deportation officer encountered Hernandez-Galvan when he was in the McClain County Sheriff’s Office in Purcell on May 2, 2018. Later that month he was turned over to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice at Huntsville, records show.
• Jose Carbajal-Soliswasindicted in Tulsa’s Northern District federal court on a charge of unlawful re-entry after his deportation in November 2016. He is scheduled on the court’s trial docket for April 19.
• Hugo Alfonso Castillo-Olguin, a/k/a Juan Rodriguez-Vasquez, 36, a Mexican national previously deported from the U.S. six times, was arrested in Tulsa on Nov. 3, 2020, on charges of domestic violence by strangulation and malicious injury to property.
He was released to ICE custody in late January and was arraigned in Tulsa’s federal court on March 4.
• Omar Heriberto Garcia-Luna, 20, of Tulsa, was deported from the U.S. last April, but returned.
• Pedro Herrera-Angeles was arrested in Tulsa by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol last December on charges of driving under the influence, carrying a firearm while under the influence, carrying no insurance, driving without a driver’s license, possession of drug paraphernalia and making an improper turn on roadway.
Herrera-Angeles, 41, previously was deported on three occasions, most recently on Feb. 19, 2020. He told an ICE investigator that he re-entered the U.S. less than a month later. He is scheduled for trial in the Northern District federal court on April 19.
• Francisco Serna-Hernandez, 22, was arrested by Tulsa police on Nov. 25, 2020, on a complaint of domestic assault and battery.
Serna-Hernandez, who has four aliases, was deported on three previous occasions, most recently at the International Bridge at Del Rio, Texas, in March 2018. He told ICE he re-entered the U.S. sometime in 2019 near Roma, Texas, along the Rio Grande.
He is scheduled on the Tulsa federal court’s trial docket for April 19.
• Israel Vidales-Martinez, 33, was arrested by Tulsa police on Oct. 31, 2020, on charges of domestic assault and battery and resisting arrest. He also is charged in Tulsa’s Northern District federal court with unlawful re-entry, and filed a petition March 11 to plead guilty.
Vidales-Martinez has been deported from the U.S. on four occasions, federal records show. Regardless of whether he is or is not sentenced to federal prison, he will be deported again, a court document shows.