Luis Morocho-Minga has spent about half his life in the United States after growing up in Ecuador.
He has been described as a “great father and provider” by his ex-wife and was considered his employer’s “biggest asset” during more than a decade of work at Joe’s Pizza in Fairview Heights, according to federal court records.
But Morocho-Minga’s roughly 20-year life in the Metro East was upended after a weapon charge lodged against him in December in St. Clair County led to a federal firearm possession charge in February, as part of President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
On Wednesday, Morocho-Minga, 42, appeared in federal court in East St. Louis, where U.S. District Judge David W. Dugan sentenced him to 10 months in prison on a charge of illegal alien in possession of a firearm. Morocho-Minga pleaded guilty in June.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Daniel G. Cronin, who represented Morocho-Minga at the sentencing hearing, asked Dugan to impose a sentence of time served, representing the seven months Morocho-Minga has spent in the Monroe County Jail since his arrest on the federal charge.
“This court has no choice but to sanction Mr. Morocho-Minga for his crime. But in fulfilling that duty, this court will be punishing a good man,” Cronin wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed before the hearing.
Cronin wrote that sentencing guidelines for Morocho-Minga called for a sentencing range of 10 to 16 months, meaning Dugan chose the lower end of that recommendation.
A presentencing report from the government was sealed, but Cronin cited a portion of it in his memorandum regarding the December incident that apparently prompted the weapons charge in St. Clair County.
Morocho-Minga was with another Hispanic man sitting by a slot machine in a bar when a woman “started yelling racial slurs at them,” according to the report cited by Cronin. “According to the reporting party, the two Hispanic males did not do anything while they were getting yelled at, and there was no firearm displayed.”
A “physical altercation” listed in the presentencing report “was between the woman and her boyfriend — and did not involve Mr. Morocho-Minga” or the other man with him.
Cronin praised Morocho-Minga for his “humility,” saying his sentencing guidelines “do not reflect how he turned the other cheek” in response to “epithets cast his way by a drunk who didn’t care for his heritage.”
According to a detention order filed in March, Morocho-Minga has lived in the area for almost 20 years and has been “steadily employed” at Joe’s Pizza, whose owner “offered to serve as a third-party surety” for him.
A representative of Joe’s Pizza could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Madalyn J. Campbell told Dugan the charge against Morocho-Minga is a “serious offense.”
In April, the U.S. Attorney’s Office publicized the arrests of Morocho-Minga and eight others as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration-related offenses in the Metro East. Eight of the nine had previously been deported from the United States; Morocho-Minga was the exception.
“The only person who wasn’t a prior offender was indicted for a firearms offense,” U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft said in a statement referring to Morocho-Minga.
Federal court records show Morocho-Minga agreed to forfeit a Phoenix Arms .22-caliber firearm he owned and that he did not intend to appeal Dugan’s sentence. Also, a report by the Federal Bureau of Prisons notes that if someone served time in a county jail before being transferred to a federal prison, the time served locally could be credited to the inmate as time toward completing their prison sentence.
Cronin declined to comment after the sentencing hearing, and Campbell could not be reached.
The aggravated unlawful use of a weapon charge filed in December in St. Clair County is pending. An attorney listed for Morocho-Minga could not be reached for comment Wednesday about the status of that charge.
County court records indicate a status conference was scheduled for Aug. 18, but no filings have appeared in the case since then.
Dugan told Morocho-Minga, “I wish you the very best.” The judge wrote in his order that the federal sentence would be concurrent with any sentence Morocho-Minga receives in the St. Clair County case.
The criminal charge filed against Morocho-Minga in December was his first serious charge in the United States. He previously received four traffic tickets, according to Cronin.
Deportation concerns raised
During the sentencing hearing, Cronin called one witness: Morocho-Minga’s ex-wife, Christina Kelley, of Port St. Lucie, Florida.
“He’s a great person,” Kelley testified.
Kelley declined to comment after the sentencing hearing, but previously told the Belleville News-Democrat that the couple had a son and daughter and had tried to obtain citizenship for Morocho-Minga.
“We’ve tried to go the right way to get his papers,” she said earlier this year. “It’s just so expensive and so time consuming. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Kelley said she wanted to bring her children to the hearing because she feared an immigration judge will deport Morocho-Minga to Ecuador.
“It may be the last time that they get to see him,” she said.
As Morocho-Minga was escorted from the federal courtroom after his sentencing, he told family members, “Adios, I’ll call you guys later.”
Deportation process
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has a detainer on Morocho-Minga, according to the detention order, which stated he should remain in custody after he was arrested on the federal weapons charge earlier this year.
Representatives from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review could not be reached for comment Wednesday about the status of Morocho-Minga’s case. The federal government shutdown was cited on these three agencies’ websites as a reason representatives may not have been available.
A report by the Executive Office for Immigration Review states the agency “administers the nation’s immigration court system. Immigration court hearings are civil administrative proceedings that involve alien respondents whom the Department of Homeland Security has charged with violating U.S. immigration law.”
An immigration judge then decides whether someone is deported, according to the Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Cronin wrote in his report to Dugan that additional prison time would not be necessary for Morocho-Minga because “as a practical matter, his deportation to Ecuador is inevitable.”
A “just punishment” comes not only from the length of a prison sentence “but from the numerous collateral consequences,” Cronin wrote.
“He will not be able to return to his job. He will not be able to return to his home. Even if imprisoned in the Bureau of Prisons near his family in the United States, he will be deported thousands of miles from his daughter in Marissa, Illinois — and almost exactly 2,000 miles from his ex-wife and their two children in Port St. Lucie, Florida.”
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Mike Koziatek is a reporter for the BND, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
