Del Rio Man Sentenced 15 Years for Felon Gun Possession

A Del Rio man convicted of illegally possessing multiple firearms has been sentenced to 180 months — the full 15-year statutory maximum — in federal prison, capping a case in which he repeatedly insisted the guns weren't his. Alfredo Martinez Jr., 42, pleaded guilty in July 2023 to being a felon in possession of a firearm before Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses handed down the sentence this week. The sentencing was announced by U.S. Attorney WDTX on social media, and details of the case were laid out by the U.S. Department of Justice, which confirmed that Moses sentenced Martinez following his guilty plea on July 10, 2023. Between July 2022 and January 2023, law enforcement officers uncovered multiple firearms tied to Martinez, including a .357 revolver, two shotguns — one of which the ATF determined was stolen — and a loaded MP-25 pistol with an extra magazine that turned up during a Val Verde Sheriff's Office traffic stop, according to the same DOJ account. Court records described by the department indicate that Martinez repeatedly denied the weapons belonged to him, claiming acquaintances had left the items at his home because they couldn't fit them in their vehicle. That explanation didn't stop prosecutors from building a case around the sequence of search warrants and traffic stops that connected him to the firearms over a six-month span. The prosecution was led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley Ellis-Dotson and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Allyson Breech, following a joint investigation by the ATF and the Texas Department of Public Safety's Criminal Investigation Division, with assistance from the Val Verde Sheriff's Office, the department's report notes. The mix of state, federal and local agencies reflects how firearms cases are typically built in this stretch of the border, where investigators often piece together evidence from multiple jurisdictions before a case reaches federal court. The 15-year ceiling that Martinez now faces wasn't always the law. The statutory maximum for felon in possession of a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(8) was raised from 10 years to 15 in June 2022 under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, according to LGR Law LLC, which detailed how Public Law 117-159 broadened statutory maximums for federal firearm possession and trafficking offenses. That change gave Judge Moses the room to impose the full maximum in Martinez's case. Moses, who became chief judge of the Western District of Texas in November 2022, was originally appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush after serving as chief of the U.S. Attorney's Del Rio office in the 1990s, according to background compiled on Wikipedia. She was born in nearby Eagle Pass and was the first woman to serve as chief judge for the district. The Del Rio Division of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, where she presides, exercises federal jurisdiction over border counties including Val Verde, Maverick, Kinney, Edwards and Terrell, per Ballotpedia, and it carries a heavy docket of immigration, narcotics and firearms cases. Martinez's sentence lands alongside a string of maximum-penalty firearms cases moving through the same courthouse. In September 2025, the Del Rio federal court sentenced 39-year-old Crystal City resident Mario Zavala to 180 months for felon in possession of a firearm after he admitted to carrying a loaded .40 caliber handgun while maintaining ties to the Texas Mexican Mafia; Zavala had a prior 2013 conviction for organized criminal activity, the Justice Department reported. In March, Mexican national Jose De La Cruz-Cardoza was sentenced in the same courthouse to 180 months and fined $15,000 for conspiracy to traffic firearms after Customs and Border Protection seized eight handguns during an outbound inspection in Eagle Pass, with follow-up searches turning up 24 more firearms and 4,000 rounds of ammunition at a San Antonio stash house. Just months before that, in February, three North Carolina family members pleaded guilty in Del Rio federal court to conspiring to traffic firearms to the Sinaloa Cartel following an interdiction at the Del Rio Port of Entry in October 2024, a case prosecuted under Operation Take Back America. Federal firearm prosecutions across the Western District of Texas are routinely pursued under Project Safe Neighborhoods, a Department of Justice initiative that unites federal, state and local law enforcement in targeting repeat violent offenders and illegal gun possession. Hoodline has covered a similar 12-year sentence handed down in Eagle Pass just weeks earlier, part of a wider crackdown on felony gun possession moving through Del Rio's federal courthouse.