Repeat Illegal Reentry Offender Caught During I-5 Traffic Stop and Drug Seizure
MEDFORD, Ore. -Julio Gonzalez-Zamudio, 44, from Mexico was sentenced to federal prison for illegally reentering the United States. Senior United States District Judge Owen M. Panner sentenced Gonzalez-Zamudio to 72 months in prison following earlier deportations and his recent arrest by Oregon State Police for drug trafficking.
On Jan. 30, 2014, the Oregon State Police stopped a vehicle during the early morning hours for a traffic violation on I-5 in Douglas County, Oregon. Gonzalez-Zamudio, a passenger in the vehicle, initially identified himself with a false name and Mexican driver’s license. Following the arrest of the driver for possessing a methamphetamine pipe, defendant took off running across I-5 when the officer attempted to arrest him. He was subsequently tackled by police and arrested. A search of the vehicle resulted in the seizure of over two and a half pounds of methamphetamine.
Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents found Gonzalez-Zamudio lodged in the county jail. They determined that he had been deported from the United States on four previous occasions. During the various times he has been in the United States, he has repeatedly committed various drug offenses and crimes of violence including residential burglaries and menacing with a firearm and he served a 65 month sentence in state prison. Following his release from prison in 2006, he was again deported. In 2010, he was found in the United States in the Washington County Jail, Oregon and was later convicted of illegal reentry in Federal District Court in Portland. Defendant received a lower 27-month fast-track sentence and was warned about not illegally returning again to the United States. He was deported in November 2011. In sentencing Gonzalez-Zamudio, the Court sentenced him to 57 months for his current illegal reentry conviction and 15 months for violating the terms and conditions of his release from custody in 2011, both sentences served consecutively.
The case was investigated by the Oregon State Police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Byron Chatfield.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
