Federal prosecutors have charged two men from Mexico for allegedly firing guns in a public area east of Phoenix.
Luis Alfonso Hernandez Felix and Jose Romario Zazueta Valenzuela were taken into custody after U.S. Forest Service agents observed “a group of subjects shooting firearms recklessly into the air and down into the ground” at Tonto National Forest, according to a criminal complaint filed October 7 in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.
Agents on a special multi-agency patrol identified the two men carrying a Glock 9mm semi-automatic and a .45-caliber pistol. The complaint noted they were discharging firearms without a safe backstop while large crowds were nearby.
Forest Service agents, accompanied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations detention officers, interviewed the men in Spanish. They learned the guns were borrowed from friends and that neither man was legally present in the U.S.
The agents informed Hernandez and Zazueta that shooting at scattered refuse on federal property is prohibited by posted signs and public information. They were also told that people illegally present in the U.S. cannot legally possess or discharge firearms.
Both men now face up to 10 years in prison for possession of a firearm by an alien unlawfully present in the United States and are also subject to deportation.
The Department of Justice notes that knowingly providing or selling a firearm to a prohibited person is also a felony. Hernandez and Zazueta said the friends they borrowed the guns from were not present and did not immediately identify them.
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