Former trainer Jorge Navarro is likely to be deported according to a sentencing report submitted Friday by the former trainer’s legal representation in his federal horse doping case. Navarro pled guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit drug adulteration and misbranding in August.
The sentencing document was first reported on by the Paulick Report.
“Jorge Navarro faces permanent separation from his family and an end to life as he has known it in the United States, despite the fact that he has been lawfully residing here for the last 35 years,” the document, obtained by Horse Racing Nation, said. “Jorge is facing an almost certain deportation to a country where he has almost no familial, social or economic ties.”
Navarro immigrated to the U.S. from Panama. In addition to deportation, he faces up to five years in federal prison in the case.
The former trainer was arrested in 2020 as part of a larger federal case that also entangled Jason Servis, who has pleaded not guilty to his alleged role in the conspiracy. At his plea-change hearing in August, he admitted to drugging horses, including “about 50 injections” of a substance he called “monkey” to X Y Jet, who died of what Navarro called a heart attack.
“I administered drugs that were misbranded and/or adulterated, as they were new drugs without FDA approval,” Navarro said at the hearing. “They were administered to horses without a valid prescription and/or were manufactured in facilities without FDA registration.”
The sentencing document also expressed concern for the conditions under which Navarro will spend his prison term. It requested he be placed in a facility as close as possible to his family in Florida.
It also points out that instead of serving in a minimum-security prison as would normally be the case, he may be sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
“The conditions of confinement at the ICE deportation facility are known to be extremely poor in comparison to those at a Bureau of Prison’s minimum security camp facility which Jorge would otherwise be designated to,” the document read.
In addition to the pre-sentencing report, the Friday filing also included letters from family members and friends of Navarro’s who asked the court to be as lenient as possible when sentencing the former trainer.
The prosecution in the case will also file a sentencing report, which must be submitted to the court by Dec. 10.
