A Mexican national who was previously deported from the United States again faces deportation after being sentenced for illegal reentry in a Bangor federal court last week.

On Monday, Nov. 25, 20-year-old Juan Manuel Castro Loja pleaded guilty and was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Bangor to time served for entering the country after a prior removal.

Castro Loja, a Mexican national, will be deported following his incarceration.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Castro Loja had been incarcerated prior to his sentencing since Oct. 21, 2024, when he was apprehended by a Border Patrol agent who located him in a van during a traffic stop in Farmington.

Immigration records show that Castro Loja was previously deported from the U.S. in April of this year, after illegally crossing into the country over the southern border.

Castro Loja had not obtained the express consent of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to reapply for admission, prosecutors said.

The case was investigated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The same week that Castro Loja was located by Border Patrol in Farmington, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office made back-to-back traffic stops on vans filled with illegal aliens.

According to Sheriff’s Office police logs, on Wednesday, Oct. 25, deputies stopped a van carrying eight occupants who could not speak English in Kingfield.

The next day, on Oct. 26, a deputy stopped a large van in New Vineyard carrying six occupants who were determined to be illegal aliens who had entered the U.S. illegally from Ecuador.

The number of apprehensions of migrants entering the U.S. illegally across the northern border in Maine’s Houlton Sector reached a new high of 344 in fiscal year 2024, hitting a number six-times that of the apprehensions recorded in 2021 — just 57.

According to CBP data, 73 of the 344 migrants encountered in FY24 in the Houlton Sector were Ecuadorian nationals, with the other top nationalities encountered being Mexican (66), Romanian (40), Guatemalan (37), Honduran (19) and Venezuelan (12).