A man from Nicaragua who was deported from South Florida nearly two decades ago has been sentenced to a five-year federal prison term after pleading guilty to illegally re-entering the country.
Marco Orlando Vado, 66, was charged in federal court by indictment in December 2023 with one count of illegal re-entry after removal. He pleaded guilty to the charge this June and was sentenced last week, federal court records show.
Vado was deported to Nicaragua in 2009, not long after he was sentenced to probation for a 2006 cocaine trafficking charge in Broward County. He had returned to the U.S. at some point before April 2022, when he was arrested by North Miami Beach Police for attempted sexual battery of a minor under 12, federal prosecutors said in a news release Wednesday.
The arrest violated Vado’s probation for the earlier Broward County charge, and he was booked into the Broward jail in late 2023. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities were alerted to Vado’s arrest through fingerprinting technology when he was booked, according to a factual proffer in his federal court case.
There were no records showing that Vado applied for or received permission to re-enter the country after his deportation, the factual proffer said.
Vado’s federal sentence will run consecutive to his six-year state prison sentence, which he received in 2024 for violating probation in his Broward County case, federal prosecutors said.
Prior to receiving his federal sentence last week, Vado was already held in a Florida state prison, Department of Corrections records show.