Cesar Campos-Reyes, 52, the owner of several Mexican restaurants in Alabama, including El Patron, pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, money laundering and employing unauthorized workers on Sept. 9. Last July, Campos-Reyes was arrested following an ICE and FBI raid at several of his properties. Prosecutors say he used pandemic relief money to buy property and knowingly employed workers not legally allowed to work inside the U.S.
Campos-Reyes, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Auburn resident, initially pleaded not guilty to all charges at his initial appearance in federal court on July 18, 2025, after his arrest three days earlier. On July 15, 2025, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies had executed search warrants at 14 locations associated with Campos-Reyes, including eight restaurants, across six Alabama counties.
Also on July 15, 2025, Campos-Reyes’s brother-in-law, Isaac Fernandez-Lopez, was charged with harboring and unlawfully employing migrants. Several of the nine employees also detained on that day, who federal authorities say were living in the country illegally, claimed he was the manager at El Patron Mexican Grill in Opelika. Fernandez-Lopez was later released on July 28, 2025, after a judge ruled that there was no probable cause to convict Lopez…