BANGOR, Maine – U.S. District Judge Lance E. Walker sentenced a Mexican citizen last week in the U.S. District Court in Bangor to 27 months in prison, following repeated attempts to illegally enter the United States.
Alberto Beltran-Martinez, 44, along with six other individuals, was in the back of a van pulled over by a Houlton Sector U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent on Route 1A in Hamlin near the international U.S. – Canada border last April.
On April 29, 2023, Beltran-Martinez and the other people he was traveling with, were arrested at the Van Buren Border Patrol Station. In September 2023, he pleaded guilty to entering the country illegally.
At the time of his arrest, Beltran-Martinez told a border patrol agent that he had flown into Toronto for vacation a week earlier. While in Toronto, he said he met an unnamed person and they smoked marijuana and combined with a prescription drug he was taking led to his unknowing border crossing, court documents said.
Still under the influence, Beltran-Martinez, along with the other passengers in the van, entered the woods on the western side of Grand Falls, New Brunswick, according to the border patrol agent’s affidavit.
While walking through mud and thick burdocks, they got lost for several hours before crossing the border into the U.S. where a van was waiting to pick them up, the border patrol agent said.
The other individuals also flew into Canada before attempting to cross the northern Maine border, according to court documents. Each reported paying the drivers who brought them to a New Brunswick gas station thousands of dollars to enter the U.S.
One husband and wife said they paid over $6,000 and were told once they crossed into the U.S. they would have to pay an additional $2,000, documents said.
Beltran-Martinez has several other U.S. convictions dating back to 2004, including felony failure to appear, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and illegal reentry of a previously deported alien.
Immigration records showed that Beltran-Martinez had previously been removed from the U.S. in September 2006 at Laredo, Texas and in April 2021 at Del Rio, Texas.
