MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Pushing aside advisory sentencing guidelines that called for six months behind bars for a Yemeni man who paid smugglers to get into the United States, a federal judge on Monday imposed a five-year prison term.
Sanford Schulman, a lawyer who represents defendant Haidar Abo Ayedh Almuntaser, didn't mince words.
"In 35 years, 4,000 clients, this is the most ridiculous sentence I've ever heard in my life," he told FOX10 News after the hearing. "I'm a federal lawyer; go all across the country. Guidelines were six months. He gave him 10 times that. We had a hearing where there were no weapons, guns, drugs - nothing."
Almuntaser in July pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit international money laundering.
The five-year prison term is the same punishment that Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock handed down last month to co-defendant Salim Mohamed Yehya Alsahqani, an immigrant from Yemen who opened a gas station in the Selma area and who admitted to arranging payments to smugglers. In exchange for those payments, smugglers guided Almuntaser and another man from Yemen on separate journeys through Central America and Mexico.
"I am very concerned about the nature and circumstances of this case," the judge said.
Schulman noted that his client applied for asylum once he reached the United States and has been living for the last four years in the Detroit area. He said Almuntaser was working two jobs while awaiting his asylum hearing and married an American woman. He said the couple have two children and that Almuntaser adopted the woman's other child from a previous marriage.
"He has a tremendous amount of gratitude to be in the United States and a great amount of hope that things will work out," he said during the hearing.
Speaking through an interpreter, Almuntaser said he has worked very hard building a family.
"And I cannot live without them," he said. "And they are my whole life."
Almuntaser told the judge that his family has lived in a difficult situation while he has been locked up.
"Your honor, be merciful with me, and God Almighty will be merciful with you," he said.
An FBI agent testified that investigators uncovered Facebook messages from co-defendant Salim Mohamed Yehya Alsahqani suggesting that he was selling guns, grenades and other arms. Court documents include recent pictures of Alsahqani in Yemen holding rifles.
The court documents also include a photograph of the Nicaraguan identification card that Almuntaser sent to Alsahqani in December 2020 with instructions to send a $700 payment. The agent also testified that Almuntaser and Mahmood Naji Saad Qamus, a co-defendant who did not make it to the border, remained in communication with each other as they made their separate journeys.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Bodnar noted that Almuntaser used his Yemeni passport to fly to Djibouti in East Africa and then spent time in Egypt before going to Ecuador to begin his trek.
"This is a sophisticated actor," the prosecutor said. "He knows how to travel internationally. He has a passport. He chose not to do that."
Schulman, Almuntaser's lawyer, noted that even the FBI agent acknowledged that his client had nothing to do with the weapons that investigators tied to Alsahqani. He also pointed out that a federal judge in Michigan initially allowed Almuntaser to remain free - a decision that a federal judge in Mobile later reversed.
Schulman said he believes that the judge's sentence was merely a "rubber stamp." He said Almuntaser could appeal, but he acknowledged that judges have broad discretion in sentencing.
"It's absurd. It's ridiculous," he said. "It's in a mindset; it's xenophobic. I don't know what it is. But it wasn't based on the evidence."