Nine times he voluntarily left after being arrested by federal immigration authorities. He went before judges in three other cases.
After one arrest on Oct. 9, 2006, by the U.S. Border Patrol in Santa Teresa, N.M., he was convicted of illegally re-entering the country and served an 18-month sentence in prison before being deported.
The 33-year-old man, who has worked in construction, has been back in an Alabama jail since July, awaiting his Jan. 3 sentencing after pleading guilty Sept. 15 to another illegal re-entry charge. That charge carries another possible prison sentence and a 13th deportation.
Meraz-Martinez is part of the growing number of people in Alabama and the nation charged with illegal re-entry by an alien previously deported -- a crime that now represents nearly a quarter of all federal criminal prosecutions in the United States.
In Alabama, the number of cases filed by federal prosecutors has more than doubled in the past five years -- from 33 cases during fiscal year 2005-2006 to 78 so far this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Alabama's numbers, however, are just a tiny fraction of the 35,836 illegal re-entry charges filed nationwide in fiscal year 2010, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. So far 18,552 new prosecutions have been filed in the first six months of the fiscal year, and if the trend continues, that number will eclipse last year's, according to a clearinghouse report.
Illegal re-entry is a charge that applies when a person is deported and then returns without legal permission. U.S. attorneys in each of the nations 94 federal districts have discretion over whether to prosecute such cases and how often.
Thousands filed
The number of cases prosecuted in Alabama pales compared to the thousands filed each year in border states such as Arizona and Texas. The U.S. attorney representing the northern district of Alabama said that, because of limited resources, her office can't prosecute every case brought to it by immigration authorities.
"We target people who are a risk to the community," said U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance. Illegal immigrants who have committed other crimes, particularly violent ones, will be charged, Vance said.
In some cases, prosecutors don't charge the person with illegal re-entry but choose another immigration crime such as transporting an alien, if several are arrested together, or being an alien in possession of a firearm.
"We charge what makes the most sense," Vance said. "We don't want to overcharge and waste the people's resources."
Vance attributes the increase in prosecution of illegal re-entry charges to the office's general focus on violent crime, rather than an increase in the number of illegal immigrants in the state. "We have an aggressive violent crime strategy," she said.
Since 2000, Meraz-Martinez has been arrested for DUI five times by sheriff's deputies in Shelby and Butler counties, and by police in Gardendale, Alabaster and Hueytown. He also pleaded guilty to theft of property charges in Shelby County in 2000, and later was arrested for probation violations, according to an affidavit by an immigration agent.
Meraz-Martinez has numerous tattoos associated with the Barrio Azteca street gang, although he told immigration agents he had not been an active member in seven years.
"He doesn't have anything violent in his past," said Meraz-Martinez's court-appointed attorney, Scott Brower.
Brower said Meraz-Martinez came to the United States when he was 13 years old. He attended school here and is fluent in English. He keeps coming back to the United States because he wants to help his sister with her 13-year-old special needs daughter, Brower said. His mother also lives in the Birmingham area, and he has a child who is a U.S. citizen from a relationship with a citizen.
"He obviously wants to be here," Brower said.
The penalty for re-entering the U.S. illegally is no more than two years in prison. But the for those re-entering illegally after a criminal conviction for an aggravated felony, the person could get up to a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years.
Many immigrants with no other associated felonies end up being sentenced to about six months in prison.
Most of the time the person pleads guilty, Brower said. Sometimes the person has spent months in jail awaiting their hearings and the judge sentences them to the time they've already served and turns them over to immigration for deportation, he said.
Waiting in jail for months isn't a problem for many charged in states such as Arizona and Texas, where there are so many cases that prosecutors have set up fast-track systems. Immigrants plead guilty, are sentenced with time served and deported in a matter of weeks of their arrest.
"It's really different treatment depending on where you are," Brower said.
Brittney Nystrom, director of policy and legal affairs at the National Immigration Forum, questions whether the fast-track systems are fair. "My concern, and the concern of other attorneys, is that defendants don't have sufficient time to consult with attorneys and understand what they are pleading to," she said.
Glennon Threatt, who is on the list of attorneys eligible to be appointed by the federal court to represent indigent clients, said he's noticed the number of illegal re-entry charges go up in the Birmingham area. "I've had about seven (clients) in the past 18 months. ... Before that I had practiced since 1987 without a single case," he said.
Threatt said he's also had five clients arrested for illegal re-entry whom federal prosecutors declined to charge.
If federal prosecutors decide not to charge a person with illegal re-entry, it doesn't mean the person gets to stay in the country.
Temple Black, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in an email that when an illegal immigrant is in the custody of U.S. Marshals, a detainer is filed. If the charges are not pursued by the U.S. Attorney's Office, the detainee is transferred to ICE custody and the removal process begins, he wrote.
Not a deterrent
Deportation, however, doesn't always stick. In some cases, the illegal immigrants are back in the United States within days or weeks.
More than 40 percent of the people in Mexico live under that country's poverty level, Threatt said. "It's (the re-entry charge is) not acting as a deterrent," he said.
Brower said he had a federal judge about two years ago ask one of his clients who had been deported to Mexico just a week before how long he had stayed in that country before returning. He told her three hours.
Many of the illegal immigrants risk death in the desert or at the hands of drug cartels to get into the United States, Nystrom said.
"If that isn't enough to deter them, I question whether time served or six months in the Bureau of Prisons is a deterrence," she said.
Brower said he believes the nation needs to streamline the process to make it faster for people wanting to enter the country to be able to gain U.S. citizenship. At the same time, the nation needs to make the laws tougher so people may not take the risk of entering illegally.
"I think that would go a long way in making both sides happy," Brower said.
Whatever the solution is to the illegal immigrant problem, Vance said it should be the responsibility of the federal government -- not the states.
The Justice Department made that same point in arguments it made to a federal judge recently while trying to halt implementation of Alabama's new immigration law, which was set to go into effect Sept. 1 but has been temporarily delayed.
"The Constitution has been very clear from early on in this country's history that, as a united country, we have to have one united immigration policy," Vance said.
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