A Mexican national living in the U.S. under the protection of an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will be spending more than eight years in prison for leading a straw purchasing ring that supplied firearms to cartel members in Mexico.
This week, 22-year-old Mario Elier Leal went before Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane for a sentencing hearing at a federal courthouse in McAllen. Texas. Leal previously pleaded guilty to straw purchasing charges in 2024.
During the hearing, Judge Crane sentenced Leal to 97 months in federal prison. According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, since Leal is not a U.S. citizen, he will face a deportation process once he completes his sentence. Leal was in the country under the DACA program, meaning that he had been brought illegally into the country as a child but had since been allowed to stay.
