(AP) — A Mexican native without proper documentation was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison for assaulting and injuring an immigration officer in 2018, federal authorities in Mississippi said.
Vicente Lopez-Sanchez, 41, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release for assaulting and inflicting serious bodily injury upon a federal law enforcement officer, said a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Jackson.
Lopez-Sanchez was stopped for a traffic violation on Interstate 20 in Brandon on Aug. 2, 2018.
Authorities said he didn’t have a driver’s license and could only name one of the four passengers in his vehicle. The officer suspected Lopez-Sanchez was smuggling immigrants into the country.
The Brandon police officer and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer attempted to arrest Lopez-Sanchez, but he resisted and later broke a bone in the immigration officer’s foot.
Lopez-Sanchez was convicted last year.