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The Creve Coeur police officer pulled it over and shined a light in the window. The driver barely spoke English, but he handed over a wallet.

“Do you have a driver’s license?” the officer asked, according to body camera video.

No, said Juan Miguel Rodriguez-Cuatianquiz.

“Are you here illegally?” the officer asked.

Rodriguez-Cuatianquiz answered yes. He had been deported once before.

The officer arrested him and called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rodriguez-Cuatianquiz was eventually indicted in federal court for reentering the country after a prior deportation.

Tapping into traffic stops by local police is just one way federal authorities have ramped up criminal charges against undocumented immigrants, mirroring enforcement efforts nationwide.

The number of undocumented immigrants charged in St. Louis federal court rose to at least 48 between March 1 and July 31. Last year in the same time period, there was one such criminal case.

This June, people charged with immigration crimes made up a quarter of all new filings in federal court.

Documents in those cases highlight how people end up on ICE’s radar, and the consequences. They are being arrested, charged, quickly sentenced and slated for deportation. Dozens of prosecutors are pitching in to get it done.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Albus said in an interview this week that every lawyer in the St. Louis office’s criminal division, roughly 45 people, is being asked to handle immigration cases. That includes prosecutors who typically focus on gang prosecutions and crimes against children.

Compared with those cases, however, immigration charges are simple, Albus said. Most people are charged with entering the country again after a prior deportation, which is clearly proven using records from immigration authorities.

The increase in charges, he said, is in line with Justice Department priorities. It’s also a result of immigration agents and local police arresting more people and making more charging referrals.

“It’s a priority for our office,” Albus said. “But without the police officers and without the agents, we wouldn’t have anything to file.”

In the past, immigration prosecutions were typically reserved for people who had convictions for offenses such as burglary, gun crimes or assault, said Scott Krischke, an attorney in the St. Louis public defender’s office who has handled such cases for years. Now, it’s a growing part of his caseload, including people who have no serious criminal history.

“It’s gone from a handful of cases to as many as a quarter” of the caseload, Krischke said.

A rise in cases

There are two ways for people who enter the U.S. without documentation to come into contact with the legal system.

The first is through administrative immigration court, which can convict people of the misdemeanor offense of entering the country illegally and then deport them. Most of the people arrested and being held in county jails across Missouri are in this category, awaiting for an immigration judge’s ruling.

The second route: criminal charges in federal court. The Justice Department has treated such prosecutions differently over various presidential administrations.

Between fiscal years 2009 and 2016, during President Barack Obama’s term, there were about 84,000 immigration-related prosecutions each year, , a nonprofit based at Syracuse University.

In April 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance policy” for illegal border crossings. Criminal prosecutions jumped to around 100,000 nationwide in that fiscal year, along the southern border.

Those numbers grew even higher in 2019, topping 115,000 before a sharp drop-off in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Prosecutions stayed relatively low during Joe Biden’s presidency, ranging between 25,000 and 32,000 between fiscal years 2021 and 2024.

During that time, people who had entered the country illegally were typically being deported through immigration court. Prosecutions were reserved for those with serious prior felonies.

But when Trump was reelected last year, he pledged a new crackdown on illegal immigration. Almost immediately, immigration-related felony charges began to rise in St. Louis, as they did across the country.

Last year, between March and July, there was just one immigration charge filed in St. Louis federal court, records show. But in March of this year, federal prosecutors filed nine immigration-related cases here, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis. In April, they filed 13 cases. They filed six in May, 12 in June and eight in July.

Most of the people charged were from Mexico. Others came from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The majority face low-level felonies, including unlawful reentry of an illegal alien.

But some face higher-level charges, such as drug trafficking, or an aggravated illegal reentry offense — meaning they committed a serious crime while in the country illegally. Only 6% of those charged between March and the end of July are facing aggravating charges.

‘Additional steps’

Among those charged who had significant criminal histories was Jose Luis Mata-Cedillo. Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Mata-Cedillo, who is from Mexico, with aggravated immigration-related crimes.

He had spent five years in a federal prison in the 2010s for distributing drugs, but he returned to the U.S. in 2021. In May, he was caught at a St. Louis truck stop trying to pick up 110 pounds of methamphetamine, records say.

Other defendants have hit ICE’s radar due to prior investigations.

Jean Carlos Morales-Diaz, a native of Honduras, was stopped by St. Louis police in January 2024 while speeding through Carondelet Park on the city’s south side. He had a gun and spent shell casings in the car, records say.

Police arrested Morales-Diaz and took him in for questioning, but he was released without any charges. Then, this March, he was stopped and arrested by Town and Country police for various traffic violations, including driving without a valid license.

Morales-Diaz was issued a citation and released then, too. But immigration authorities had launched an investigation stemming from his 2024 Carondelet Park arrest.

On June 5, ICE officers arrested him at a city auto shop where he worked as a mechanic. He was charged with being an undocumented immigrant in possession of a weapon.

But for many of the defendants in St. Louis federal court this year, their cases began with a simple traffic stop.

Documents show police from O’Fallon to Creve Coeur, Manchester and Arnold pulling drivers over and alerting federal authorities of the arrests.

It’s not always clear in documents why cops initiated the stops. But the drivers ended up being cited for DUIs, not having insurance, or, most often, driving without a valid license.

Police officials in Creve Coeur and St. Charles County told the Post-Dispatch they call ICE when they suspect someone they’ve arrested might be in the country illegally.

But in the past, ICE officials — dealing with finite resources — may not have chosen to pick up someone without a criminal history. They also may have processed people through the immigration court system again to more quickly deport them instead of referring criminal charges to prosecutors.

Now, they might be digging deeper, Albus said.

“It’s the law enforcement that’s taking those additional steps to develop that immigration charge, to go along with the weapons charge or the DWI or the drug charge,” he said.

‘Leave everything in God’s hands’

Many of the people charged this year have no criminal history other than traffic tickets.

For example, Engel Diaz-Arauz was arrested by ICE in March after being pulled over by police for driving without a valid license in St. Peters. His only other criminal history was a prior speeding ticket and citation for driving without a valid license.

In an interview in Spanish, Diaz-Arauz’s sister, who asked not to be named because she fears for her safety, described how her brother came to the U.S. from Nicaragua in 2019. He was deported but returned the following year.

The political situation in their home country was dangerous, she said, and it was nearly impossible to find work even though she’d graduated from medical school. Diaz-Arauz had similar troubles.

The sister came to the U.S. in 2022. Eventually, she moved to the St. Louis area hoping to find work. Her brother followed her and worked in construction until he was arrested.

It was expensive to send him money to pay for food and to speak on the phone, she said. And she missed him. It was hard to see him dealing with so much uncertainty, she said.

“Since we’re a Christian family, we leave everything in God’s hands,” she said. “I think that is what has comforted us the most: Waiting on God and trusting in God.”

Earlier this month, a judge sentenced Diaz-Arauz to the time he had already served waiting for trial — more than four months. He was then deported.

Many other defendants have also been sentenced to the time they had already served, in part because they have no criminal history or only minor offenses such as traffic tickets.

Krischke, the public defender, said it has been hard to explain to clients why they have to wait in jail when they’ll ultimately be deported anyway.

“I try to explain to them the truth,” he said. “While it may seem confusing and unnecessary, the law does allow for the prosecutions of people who have been previously removed — even if it was just once when they were initially crossing the border, say, 10 years ago.”

Rodriguez-Cuatianquiz, the man pulled over by Creve Coeur police for running through a flashing red light, initially crossed the border in May 2017. He was arrested almost immediately that year and returned to Mexico, court records say.

Then this year, after he was arrested in Creve Coeur and charged in federal court, he was sentenced to time served. He was later deported to Mexico.

Daniel Guerrero of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.