Fentanyl Dealer Sentenced to Federal Prison

A Chicago man that distributed fentanyl was sentenced on June 8, 2026, to 13 years in federal prison.

Deorey Hayes-Davis, age 31, from Chicago, Illinois, received the prison term after a January 16, 2026, guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances.

Information disclosed at the sentencing hearing showed that, between April 2023 and May 2023, Hayes-Davis distributed several hundred fentanyl pills and fentanyl powder to customers in Waterloo, Iowa. On the evening of May 27 or the morning of May 28, 2023, a woman ingested fentanyl that she had obtained from Hayes-Davis. She died from a fentanyl-related overdose. Around the time of the overdose, Hayes-Davis provided two locked duffel bags-one that contained approximately seven firearms and another that contained drugs, including fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine-to a customer. The customer later opened the duffel bags and distributed a portion of the drugs before the rest was recovered by law enforcement officers.

Hayes-Davis was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Hayes-Davis was sentenced to 156 months' imprisonment. He must also serve a four-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

Hayes-Davis is being held in the United States Marshal's custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

This prosecution is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States.

HSTF Kansas City is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, covering Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. HSTF Kansas City is composed of agents and officers from the Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Postal Inspection Service, the State Investigative Agencies for Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and the Kansas City Missouri Police Department.

This HSTF case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dillan Edwards and investigated by HSTF Kansas City, with the assistance of the Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force consisting of the Waterloo Police Department, Cedar Falls Police Department, Black Hawk County Sheriff's Department, Evansdale Police Department, Waverly Police Department, Hudson Police Department, La Porte City Police Department, and the Bremer County Sheriff's Department; and the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement.

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.plLinks to other government and non-government sites will typically appear with the "external link" icon to indicate that you are leaving the Department of Justice website when you click the link..

The case file number is 25-CR-02019-CJW.

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