A 46-year-old man with seven DWI convictions and a history of fleeing crash scenes has been sentenced to 74 months in federal prison for illegally reentering the United States after being deported twice. Fernando Salvador Perez-Morales was indicted in November 2025, pleaded guilty in March, and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr, according to federal prosecutors.
The sentence was handed down specifically for the federal crime of illegal reentry, not for the drunk-driving convictions themselves, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Those two threads of Perez-Morales's record — the immigration violations and the DWIs — are legally distinct, but together they paint a picture of a man who kept coming back to North Texas roads no matter how many times he was removed from the country or convicted behind the wheel.
A Decade and a Half of DWIs, Including Two Hit-and-Runs
Perez-Morales racked up seven separate DWI convictions between 2009 and 2025, as reported by the Dallas Express. Two of those convictions stemmed from crashes in which he fled the scene, according to the same report. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apprehended him in August 2025, after his seventh DWI conviction.
He had already been removed from the country twice before that arrest — once in 2013 and again in 2020 — and had illegally reentered the United States three times in total, per the news outlet's reporting. Following his prison term, Perez-Morales is expected to be removed from the United States once more, the report notes.
Prosecutors and ICE Officials Weigh In
U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said individuals who repeatedly violate immigration laws and endanger communities by driving drunk after multiple removals are not welcome in the United States. Raybould said Perez-Morales continued to return illegally to the country and put North Texans at risk, and that his record included seven DWI convictions, among them the hit-and-run crashes.
Miguel Vergara, director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations' Dallas field office, said Perez-Morales illegally reentered the country three times and repeatedly endangered Americans by driving intoxicated. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations conducted the investigation into Perez-Morales, and the case was prosecuted by Eric Bales and Marbel Leonel Munoz, both special assistant U.S. attorneys in the Northern District of Texas Major Crimes Section.
Part of a Broader Federal Push in North Texas
Perez-Morales's case fits into a larger pattern of federal enforcement activity in the region. Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Texas have charged 184 defendants with illegal reentry after removal since June 1 as part of an initiative targeting repeat criminal offenders, according to the Justice Department. In a separate North Texas case, a man with prior convictions for drug trafficking, sexual abuse of a child, and firearm theft was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for illegal reentry, per a Justice Department release.
Another case in the same federal district involved Guadalupe Gerardo Reyes-Gonzalez, a Mexican citizen charged with illegal reentry after removal shortly following his second DWI; he pleaded guilty in August and was later sentenced by a federal court, according to Justice Department records. Statewide, Texas Department of Public Safety data shows drunk-driving recidivism remains a persistent problem, with one quarterly report showing a conviction recidivism rate above 25 percent among DWI cases reviewed, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
