United States of America v. Lesman Jeroan Rivera-Vasquez

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 25-3494
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Lesman Jeroan Rivera-Vasquez
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis
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Submitted: May 1, 2026
Filed: May 7, 2026
[Unpublished]
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Before SHEPHERD, ERICKSON, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
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PER CURIAM.
Lesman Rivera-Vasquez pleaded guilty to possessing ammunition as an alien
unlawfully in the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5). Although his advisory
guideline sentencing range was ten to sixteen months in prison, the plea agreement
included a joint recommendation of time served, approximately four months. Before
sentencing, the district court ordered the parties to submit briefing addressing
whether a “harsher sentence [was] required . . . to achieve adequate deterrence.” The

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court then sentenced Rivera-Vasquez to twelve months and one day and afterwards
issued a sentencing opinion explaining its decision “to triple the time the parties
requested.” We grant the motion to submit this case on the briefs, vacate the
judgment, and remand for resentencing.
While the district court could consider the need to promote respect for the law
and afford adequate deterrence, see 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(2)(A)–(B), Rivera-
Vasquez’s sentence was improperly based on considerations of “broad local,
national, and international scope that only tangentially relate to [Rivera-Vasquez’s]
underlying conduct,” United States v. Robinson, 829 F.3d 878, 880 (7th Cir. 2016)
(citation omitted). The district court opined that while the “Trump administration is
vigorously enforcing immigration laws,” the Biden administration had not. That in
2023, “more than 10,000 individuals were illegally entering the country every day,”
but since “the election of President Trump, illegal immigrant encounters dropped to
a record low.” That “many” of the Biden administration’s policies not only
“increase[d] immigration-related crimes” but “were also illegal.”1 And that the court
“cannot ignore the risk that the Federal Government, years in the future, might revert
to the same practices it had in place from 2021 through 2024.”
The sentence should have been about Rivera-Vasquez, not President Biden.
See Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 52 (2007) (“It has been uniform and constant
in the federal judicial tradition for the sentencing judge to consider every convicted
person as an individual . . . .” (citation omitted)). A criminal defendant should not
be punished for a prior administration’s immigration policy. Cf. United States v.
Texas, 599 U.S. 670, 679 (2023) (“[C]ourts generally lack meaningful standards for
assessing the propriety of [the Executive Branch’s] enforcement choices in [the
immigration] area.”).
1 For example, the district court explained how the Biden administration
refused to build a wall along the United States’ southwest border, despite “federal
law requiring it to” and “billions of dollars” appropriated for that purpose, until a
district court entered a preliminary injunction. See Gen. Land Off. v. Biden, 722 F.
Supp. 3d 710 (S.D. Tex. 2024).

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The district court abused its discretion by focusing on the immigration policy
of the former President. See United States v. Hall, 931 F.3d 694, 697 (8th Cir. 2019)
(standard of review). And because we cannot say that the error “did not affect the
district court’s selection of the sentence imposed,” United States v. Pepper, 412 F.3d
995, 999 (8th Cir. 2005) (quoting Williams v. United States, 503 U.S. 193, 203
(1992)), we vacate the sentence and remand for further proceedings. Rivera-
Vasquez’s release date is imminent, so we expect the district court will expedite
resentencing. The mandate shall issue forthwith.
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