Man sentenced to 90 months in prison for assaulting Border Patrol officers in Arizona

PHOENIX — A judge sentenced a man from Mexico to 90 months in prison last week for assaulting Border Patrol officers during a 2020 incident in southern Arizona, officials said Thursday.

Jorge Zazueta-Miranda, 51, is from Agua Prieta, a town in Mexico near the Arizona border, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona.

Zazueta-Miranda pleaded guilty to assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon on June 23 of this year, officials said.

The incident occurred on April 1, 2020, after U.S. Border Patrol agents near Douglas tried to stop two suspicious trucks with construction company logos, according to prosecutors. Agents who stopped the first truck found 19 undocumented non-citizens.

Zazueta-Miranda, who was driving the other truck, refused to stop for Border Patrol officers, prosecutors said. He deliberately rammed a pursuing agent’s vehicle and then hit a second agent’s vehicle while driving toward a break in the border wall.

Zazueta-Miranda and several undocumented non-citizens ran from the truck and made it across the border into Mexico.

Agents used a fingerprint and a witness account to identify Zazueta-Miranda as the driver. He was arrested Feb. 9, 2022, in New Mexico near the U.S.-Mexico border.