This story was first published at CPR.com.
DENVER | A U.S. Attorney for Colorado Peter McNeilly announces a series of indictments in drug and gun cases while federal and local law enforcement officers stand behind him in Denver.
A Colorado federal judge on Tuesday rejected government demands for harsh sentences against two Venezuelan men who pleaded guilty to aiding in drug and gun crimes, choosing instead to impose terms that will allow them to be released and deported in relatively short order.
In both cases, U.S. District Judge Kato Crews offered no commentary on the relative strength of the government’s case, but issued short sentences of time already served in one case and 36 months in another with 18 months credit for time served. Citing their poverty, the judge waived the fees in the cases, but asked them to each pay $200. For one of the defendants, the government sought between $15,000 and $5 million.
Both men are likely to be removed from the U.S. by next year.
The men pled guilty to various federal crimes after getting ensnared in a federal sting operation targeting drug and gun crimes in Aurora. At the time of their indictments last summer, Colorado U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly claimed some of the 30 defendants in the case were hardened members of a Venezuelan gang, including some gang leaders.
But that portrayal began to erode late last year as the government offered plea deals to some of those defendants, shaving decades off possible sentences that most of those charged have accepted so far.
The relatively lenient sentences imposed Tuesday in the first two cases to reach this stage were further indication that the courts did not view the men’s participation in drug deals as quite the threat to society McNeilly claimed.
Federal prosecutors maintained that stance before Crews on Tuesday, arguing that the operation targeted an Arapahoe County apartment building that had an increase in calls for service from local law enforcement and violent crime. They asked for a three-year sentence in the first case and minimum six and a half years in the other.
“Defense counsel has argued that this investigation has been designed to target an impoverished community and that isn’t the case,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Talia Bucci. “It was not designed to target an impoverished community, it was intended to target violent crime in a place where there had been an increase in violent crime.”
Bucci noted that the sting operation netted dozens of firearms and drugs, which are now off the street. She told the judge that at least 27 firearms were linked to previous shootings, and at least 17 had been previously reported stolen.
But Crews sentenced the men to about half of what the government wanted in each case, after hearing from defense attorneys that they were really ensnared in a government operation that cut short their hope of living in the U.S.
The Venezuelan defendants’ gains — and motivations — were simply financial, lawyers said, after they both clawed their way to the United States through dangerous Mexican trains, cartels and the Darien Gap jungle.
“The political hysteria had something to do with this, it may not have everything, but it had something,” said defense attorney David Lindsey, referring to President Trump’s promise, made in Aurora, to crack down on Venezuelan gangs and deport undocumented people out of the country at historic levels. “It created a market to make it easier for Venezuelan individuals to be involved in crime.”
Tuesday’s sentencing hearings, the first in the sprawling case, offered a window into the familiar story of immigrants who crossed into the U.S. seeking asylum and believing they had done everything by the book, including contacting the Border Patrol on arrival, only to then fail to find work and fall in with acquaintances willing to use crimes to generate income.
Jonathan Jose Ocopio-Villalobos, a Venezuelan native but a long-time resident of Colombia, told Crews Tuesday that he walked thousands of miles over the course of a year and entered the United States at the Texas border in December 2024. He made an appointment with the Customs and Border Patrol app and filed the paperwork for asylum.
Villalobos arrived in Denver within a day and found housing through some friends. He made up business cards and wanted to get into construction trades, but the work was hard to find immediately. He began shoveling snow for cash to pay the rent and buy food.
About three weeks in, he was asked to “stand watch” on a methamphetamine deal — a ruse set up by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms in order to root out what seemed to agents to be a criminal network operating from an Aurora apartment complex, Ivy Crossing.
But Villalobos, a father of five, wasn’t a gang member. He didn’t have a weapon. He said he’d get paid $1,000 for just a small amount of work, which was an eye-popping amount of money for him in his desperation to get settled.
“I’m not a bad person,” Villalobos said through a translator to Crews. “I would like to ask to … apologize to the United States and to your honor. I cannot fix the harm that was done and I regret wasting the time and I feel bad for my family.”
His lawyer, Jason Schall, told Crews on Tuesday he was the “least culpable” of the some 30 defendants the federal government charged in the case.
“His hands are worn, he is someone who will walk 5,000 miles to support his family, he is a man of deep faith and he understands he made a very bad decision and it’s set him back and set his family back,” Schall said. “And he knows he dishonors the country he wanted to be a part of – he very much regrets that.”
Even Assistant U.S. Attorney Bucci mostly agreed with Schall on Villalobos.
“He seems to have learned from his mistakes and he is expected to be removed following this,” she said. “He came here to make a better life for his family, he’ll have to do that in another country.”
Villalobos has been in federal custody since January 2025 and will now likely be transferred to ICE custody where he will eventually be removed from the U.S. His lawyer told the judge on Tuesday he hoped that process would be swift and he wouldn’t be caught in limbo in immigration custody for long.
As a native of Venezuela, but a legal citizen of Colombia with family there, it was unclear where he would be sent.
Judge Crews called Villalobos’ role in everything “minimal” and didn’t impose any supervision because of the expected deportation. He called Villalobos “sincere.”
“Good luck to you, sir, I hope you’re able to get back to your family sooner rather than later,” Crews said. “The hard worker you are and what you’ve demonstrated … I hope you can put it to use when you get back to your family.”
At an afternoon sentencing, Kevin Ruiz Perez and his attorney said he was 25 when he was working at a flooring job with terrible conditions to try and get by and pay his rent. He arrived in 2023 and reported his presence using the same app as Villalobos and was seeking asylum in the United States after walking from Venezuela to get here.
Perez found friendship with a man, another defendant in the case, who told him that he had an “investment opportunity” and that he could “double or even triple” his money, Perez’s lawyer Lindsey told Crews on Tuesday.
Perez sold guns and an illegal drug called Tusi — which in this case had MDMA and ketamine in it — to undercover agents. Lindsey called it a crime of opportunity due to Perez’s impoverished circumstances.
“He saw members of his family starved to death because there was no food,” Lindsey said of Perez’s young life. “He was swept up in this sting because of the financial viability of getting involved in it … When the government sets up house and creates a market where none existed before … the culpability goes down.”
Perez asked Judge Crews to let him go home.
“I would like to apologize for the crime committed. I feel very embarrassed and I have never participated in any crime,” he said, through a translator. “In my time here I was always working and I never had any problems … I want to go back to my country, I want to see my family and I want to apologize for what I caused.”
He’ll get that chance sometime next year after he serves the remaining 18 months or so on the 36-month sentence Crews imposed.