Being convicted of killing a couple of people didn't get Mario Montalban-Ramirez deported. Being passed out drunk at a bus stop in St. Paul probably will -- after he serves a term in federal prison.
Montalban-Ramirez, 62, pleaded guilty Monday to illegally entering the United States after deportation, a crime that could put him behind bars for 20 years before another likely deportation. Such a sentence would be the most significant time he has served over three decades of offenses in Minnesota and elsewhere.
He will be sentenced at a later date.
Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) say that cracking down on convicted felons who are in the country illegally is a high priority. ICE agents were checking the Ramsey County jail roster last December when they discovered a man who has repeatedly slipped through the cracks.
The man who passed out with a nearly empty bottle of vodka in his coat pocket was not just any homeless drunk. Montalban-Ramirez was convicted of manslaughter in Illinois in 1982, convicted of murder in Texas just two years later and had three previous deportations to his native Mexico -- in 1996, 1997 and 2003.
Yet, despite other arrests since his latest deportation, Montalban-Ramirez -- who has often gone by the name of Oscar Yturria -- has been able to stay here for much of the past two decades.
Federal and local officials acknowledged in January that they don't know how he has been allowed to stay despite so many run-ins with the law. Prosecutors admit that many deportees quickly return to the United States, drawn by families and jobs and lives built here over the years -- despite criminal records.
Officials are turning more to federal illegal-reentry prosecutions and the longer prison terms they carry to at least slow the revolving door.
