Four men — one from Venezuela and three from Mexico — are all likely heading to prison after they were arrested early this year before the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation operation swung into full force in Chicago.
They were arrested about the time President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, visited Chicago in late January after saying the city would be “ground zero” for mass deportations due to its sanctuary status.
What makes their cases unusual, according to federal court records, is that one of them admitted to a serious gun charge and the others, while pleading guilty to entering the country illegally, previously served prison time for gun and drug offenses.
Most of the thousands of people taken into custody during the Operation Midway Blitz deportation campaign from Sept. 8 to mid-December weren’t accused of committing crimes other than immigration violations and didn’t have any serious crimes in their backgrounds.
Danny Linares, who is from Venezuela, came to Chicago about two years ago, federal authorities say. That’s around the time when a wave of Venezuelans arrived in Illinois from Texas and other states. He was charged Jan. 26 with selling an undercover officer a handgun equipped to fire like a machine gun.
The pistol, which Linares sold for $1,200 in Englewood, was a plastic “ghost gun” manufactured without a serial number that law enforcement authorities can use to trace previous ownership. The officer also bought a machine-gun conversion “switch” for $150.
“Whatever you need, I can help you,” Linares is accused of telling the officer in an exchange captured on video.
Linares wasn’t in the country illegally and had “temporary protected status” that was up for review in March, prosecutors said. The status can be applied for by “nationals of certain countries experiencing problems that make it difficult or unsafe” for them to return to their home countries, according to the American Immigration Council. Linares was working as an Uber driver before he was arrested, according to court records.
He’s scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 11 when authorities say he’s expected to face 30 to 37 months in prison under federal guidelines.
Another man, Pablo Lopez-Rios, is a Mexican citizen deported from the United States an “astonishing” five times over the past quarter century, prosecutors said in a court filing. In 2016, he had received a 126-month sentence in federal court in Chicago for trafficking more than 50 pounds of cocaine, records show. On Jan. 31, U.S. marshals arrested Lopez-Rios for being in the country illegally a sixth time.
Lopez-Rios is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 8. In a court filing Monday, prosecutors requested a sentence of 27 months in prison for him, noting that “despite serving close to a decade in prison, [the] defendant has repeatedly returned to the United States.”
Another Mexican man, Kenneth Acosta-Martinez, was sentenced in November to 15 months in prison for illegal reentry to the United States.
In 2000, he was sentenced to probation in DuPage County on a drug conviction. He also got 15 months in prison in Indiana for illegal firearms possession after a stolen handgun and more than $9,000 in cash were found in his car during a traffic stop.
Before his latest arrest, he was living with a teacher and her parents in the suburbs, records show.
Fidel Yanez-Villanueva, who’s also Mexican, is facing sentencing on Feb. 3 after pleading guilty to illegal reentry. He could face 30 to 37 months in prison under federal guidelines. In 2017, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison in New Mexico on a drug conviction. He was convicted of illegal reentry twice before.
Another man, Edward Martinez-Cermeno, was arrested Jan. 26 in Chicago on a federal criminal charge from Texas accusing him of entering the country illegally. In May, he pleaded guilty to the charge in a Texas court and was sentenced to 130 days in jail.
Martinez-Cermeno, a Venezuelan, was suspected in killings in Chicago, according to an Immigration and Custom Enforcement news release. But he doesn’t appear to have been charged in connection with the Dec. 2, 2024, mass shooting in Chicago Lawn, which left three people dead and five wounded, according to court records.
Martinez-Cermeno was charged in 2024 with shoplifting at the Downtown Macy’s on State Street, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest in that case.
Meantime, federal prosecutors have dismissed illegal reentry cases against at least two other men charged in late January 2025 after they were deported.