United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-2829 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. KAMALA D. MCCOMBS, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. No. 3:20-cr-30158 — David W. Dugan, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED MAY 25, 2023 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 19, 2025 ____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and LEE, Circuit Judges. LEE, Circuit Judge. Kamala McCombs pleaded guilty to two counts of drug trafficking for her role in a conspiracy to transport large amounts of methamphetamine from Arizona to Illinois. The district court sentenced her to concurrent terms of 121 months of imprisonment and 60 months of supervised release. McCombs appeals, arguing that she was entitled to a mitigating role reduction under the United States Sentencing Guidelines Manual (“U.S.S.G.”) § 3B1.2, in part because one 2 No. 22-2829 of her co-conspirators received this reduction. Because the district court’s conclusions were not clearly erroneous, we af- firm. I. Background A. The Conspiracy Meredith Forson led a conspiracy to distribute metham- phetamine in Illinois from approximately December 2018 through July 2020. She obtained the illicit drugs from a sup- plier in Arizona and had the drugs delivered or shipped into Illinois. To do this, Forson relied on several different individ- uals to smuggle methamphetamine across state lines. One of these individuals was Jacquelynn Eng. Forson paid Eng to travel by train to Arizona, purchase the drugs, and transport them to Illinois. Forson also paid for a driver and a hotel room for Eng in Arizona. Eng, in turn, asked Ashley Heninger to join her on the trip and purchased Heninger’s ticket. On November 4, 2019, federal agents stopped Eng and Heninger at a train station in Arizona. A drug-sniffing police canine flagged Eng and Heninger’s luggage, and the agents found four packages of methamphetamine weighing about 5.8 pounds. In May 2020, Forson contacted McCombs, and McCombs agreed to accept a package of mailed methamphetamine on her behalf. Once McCombs received the package, she con- veyed it to a third person who delivered it to Forson. The following month, McCombs traveled to Arizona with Forson. On July 18, 2020, McCombs boarded an Amtrak train in Arizona headed for Illinois. But like Eng and Heninger, she was stopped by federal agents, and they discovered in McCombs’s luggage 5.7 pounds of methamphetamine in No. 22-2829 3 vacuum–sealed bags concealed inside of newly purchased pillows and outdoor candles. B. Procedural History On October 21, 2020, the government indicted Forson, McCombs, Eng, and Heninger for conspiracy to distribute over 500 grams of methamphetamine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846. Each woman was also charged with possession with in- tent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, in violation of § 841(a)(1). Each defendant’s case proceeded separately. Forson pleaded guilty on April 7, 2021. McCombs pleaded guilty on October 5, 2021, and stipulated to the conduct recounted above. In anticipation of sentencing, the probation office pre- pared McCombs’s presentence investigation report. The re- port calculated her total offense level as 33 and her guidelines range as 151 to 188 months of imprisonment. McCombs’s con- victions also carried a mandatory minimum term of impris- onment of ten years. But McCombs qualified for the safety valve provision of the First Step Act, see 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f), which allowed the district cou