Why Should Delaware Care?
Federal prosecutions of undocumented immigrants have risen precipitously in recent months in Delaware under new directives from the Trump administration. Public defenders are questioning the purpose of tying up valuable resources, however, as other means to deportation exist.
Siviaco Velasquez Roblero waited to board his plane back home.
In May, he travelled from Delaware to Dulles International Airport, passed through security with his Guatemalan passport, and found his gate. Velasquez Roblero’s ailing 96-year-old mother — who was possibly near death — and his youngest 12-year-old child waited for him on the other side of the flight.
The former farmer from Tacana, Guatemala, had spent a total of about seven years in the United States, on and off. He sold or gave away all of his belongings in the U.S. before buying a ticket back home.
Velasquez Roblero nestled into his seat at the gate. The flight would leave soon.
But he would never board.
Immigration agents arrested him because he had an outstanding warrant for reentering the country without authorization after previously being deported. The criminal warrant was issued nearly a month earlier by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware.
Velasquez Roblero is among those snared by Delaware’s federal prosecutor’s office, which has drastically escalated its pursuit of immigration-related cases since President Donald Trump took office in January, mirroring similar trends nationwide.
As U.S.-Mexico border crossings have fallen dramatically under the Trump administration, officials are scrambling to find ways to increase deportations to a level upward of 3,000 per day, a target set by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who is overseeing the deportation plan. While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations have received the most public attention, federal prosecutors have increasingly been brought into the fold as well.
Prosecutors change focus
In March, the number of people who were charged with immigration offenses in U.S. district courts jumped by nearly 40% nationwide, compared to February, according to the nonpartisan data research nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
And, immigration convictions accounted for the majority of the types of offenses that were prosecuted nationwide. Immigration convictions made up nearly 60% of the total federal offenses that U.S. attorneys chose to prosecute in March, according to TRAC.
The prosecution push has entangled dozens of Delaware immigrants in the criminal justice system for months, expending federal court resources despite a Trump administration mandate for more deportations.
After people are convicted and sentenced to prison time for the reentry charge, they’re given back to ICE and deported. It remains unclear exactly why the Trump administration and U.S. attorneys are taking this course – ICE has been deporting many people through its expedited removal process that doesn’t require the intervention of the federal court system.
Critics of the initiative described it as a waste of government resources, as the crusade appears to fly in the face of the Trump administration’s demand for speedier and increased deportations in recent weeks.
“It is disheartening that U.S. judicial resources that could be better spent on prosecuting criminal activity that actually jeopardizes the safety of Americans is instead being used in this way,” Eleni Kousoulis, the federal public defender for the District of Delaware, said in a written statement.
All told, Velasquez Roblero spent about a month in the federal criminal justice system and was sentenced to time served on Wednesday morning. Kousoulis, who represented Velasquez Roblero in court, described his time in federal criminal custody as “unwarranted,” in court documents.
ICE will once again take custody of Velasquez Roblero, and he will likely be returned to Guatemala — the same country he was steps away from returning to in May.
“I’m asking to be deported as soon as possible, and I will not come back,” Velasquez Roblero said during his sentencing hearing.
Tiana Sampson, an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, did not answer questions posed after the hearing at the Delaware District Courthouse in Wilmington and referred a Spotlight Delaware reporter to the office’s media contact.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Waste of government resources’
On Wednesday, four people pleaded guilty in federal court to the charge of reentering the country after being deported.
Two U.S. marshals ushered each defendant into the courtroom individually to have their cases heard one at a time. All the defendants — three from Guatemala and one from Mexico — donned an olive green jumpsuit, were handcuffed and had a chain wrapped around their waists.
U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Williams sentenced all of them to time served with no supervised release. The defendants would likely then be handed over to ICE and subsequently deported.
“I’m thankful to this country. I would like to apologize to the country,” Cesar Najera Moran, one of the defendants, told the judge before he was sentenced.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware Shannon Hanson – a little-known prosecutor who took over for high-profile U.S. Attorney David Weiss following his resignation just before President Trump’s inauguration – has criminally prosecuted at least 50 cases for reentering the country after deportation since the beginning of the year, according to a Spotlight Delaware analysis of unsealed court records.
Last year, the office only charged four people.
Charges for unauthorized reentry after deportation represented the biggest portion of criminal convictions won by federal prosecutors nationwide in March, according to TRAC.
The prosecutorial push comes amid a nationwide Trump administration initiative called “Operation Take Back America” that orders federal prosecutors across the country to focus their resources on immigration and border-related cases.
Hanson touted her office’s participation in the operation in May, announcing that her U.S. Attorney’s Office had filed a total of 58 immigration and border security-related cases between Jan. 20 and May 16.
The number of cases represented an 800% increase over the people charged with re-entering the country without authorization during the same time period in 2024.
Hanson released the figures shortly after Spotlight Delaware first identified the rising trend.
Kousoulis, who legally represented all the defendants at Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, said that criminally prosecuting immigrants for re-entering the country after being deported to this extent is a “massive waste of government resources,” in a written statement.
