Life sentence in US border agent's death (AP)

SAN DIEGO – A federal judge in San Diego has sentenced a Mexican man to life in prison for striking and killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent with a drug-laden Hummer as the officer laid spike strips in an attempt to puncture the vehicle's tires.

U.S. District Judge Michael Anello also sentenced Jesus Navarro on Friday to an additional 80-year term on drug counts.

The judge called the crime "particularly brutal, violent and heinous."

Agent Luis Aguilar was killed in January 2008 at a campground in California's Imperial Sand Dunes near the Arizona border.

Navarro told the judge that he was being dealt an injustice and plans to appeal.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Federal prosecutors want a Mexican man sentenced to life in prison for striking and killing a Border Patrol agent with a drug-laden Hummer as the officer laid spike strips in an attempt to puncture the vehicle's tires.

Jesus Navarro didn't intend to kill the agent, only avoid the spikes, says his attorney, who recommends that a judge deliver a 40-year prison sentence Friday.

A jury deliberated only two hours in April before convicting Navarro of second-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute marijuana in the death of Agent Luis Aguilar at a campground in California's Imperial Sand Dunes near the Arizona border in January 2008.

Navarro, 25, was extradited to the United States last year.

Shortly after Aguilar died, Navarro was arrested in Mexico and signed a detailed confession — after authorities beat and threatened him, he later said — that acknowledged a split-second choice to hit the 32-year-old Border Patrol agent instead of the spikes. He was held in Mexican prison until a judge cleared him of unrelated migrant smuggling charges and released him five months later.

The Mexican government said at the time the United States didn't ask to arrange for Navarro's extradition until after he was released.

The U.S. government was offering a reward of up to $350,000 when Mexican agents arrested him again, in February 2009, near Zihuatenejo.

Navarro testified at his two-week trial that he was in the central Mexican state of Sinaloa on the day Aguilar was killed and that Mexican authorities who were working closely with U.S. officials forced him to confess to a crime he didn't commit.

Navarro testified that he stopped driving loads of drugs after a 2007 run-in with the Border Patrol. David Bartick, his attorney, told jurors that Navarro was "basically expelled" from his drug smuggling organization.

Prosecutors highlighted testimony of Navarro's collaborators that he remained an active smuggler after the 2007 incident. Eyewitnesses to Aguilar's killing identified Navarro as the driver in photos.

His 9-year-old daughter and other family wrote U.S. District Judge Michael Anello to plead for leniency.

"He is a responsible person who does not deserve to be in there," wrote Karla Nunez, his wife of 10 years with whom he had three children. "Please don't give him too much time, his children need him."

Aguilar is one of 23 Border Patrol agents who have died in the line of duty since 1990. The married father of two children had been an agent for nearly six years and was assigned to the Yuma, Ariz., sector.

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1983 Okla. murder suspect captured at Wash. border (AP)

SEATTLE – A suspect in a 1983 killing in Oklahoma was arrested when he showed up at the U.S. border in northwestern Washington and tried to enroll in a "trusted traveler" program for frequent border crossers, authorities said Monday.

Suhail Shanti of Burnaby, British Columbia, was wanted on a first-degree murder warrant issued in LeFlore County, Okla. He was arrested Friday when agents at the Pacific Highway Port of Entry in Blaine took his fingerprints as part of the interview process for the border crossing program and checked them against a nationwide database.

Agents confirmed the warrant with officials in Oklahoma, arrested the 48-year-old and turned him over to the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office pending his extradition.

"It's like, `You're kidding me — you're under arrest,'" said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Thomas Schreiber. "For them to walk in like this is just unbelievable."

Few details of the killing were immediately available. Marion Fry, LeFlore County's first assistant district attorney, told The Associated Press that his office was digging the case file out of storage, but that it involved a homicide in the city of Poteau. The defendant failed to appear for trial and the warrant was issued in April 1984, he said.

At the time, Shanti and the victim were both international students at a junior college now known as Carl Albert State College, Fry said. He believed they were both originally from Morocco.

It was not clear if Shanti had obtained a lawyer or how long he had lived in Canada. A voice mail message left on a phone number listed for a Suhail Shanti in Burnaby was not immediately returned.

The program he was applying for is called NEXUS, a joint U.S.-Canadian effort to speed border crossings for frequent travelers who pass a background check. Participants are given a photo identification card for use at the border.

Schreiber said it's not the first time that participants or aspiring participants have been arrested. He recalled the 2008 case of Charles Green, a Blaine resident whose approved status was revoked after he was charged with failing to appear in court on a larceny charge. Green showed up in the NEXUS office to appeal the decision and was promptly arrested.

"I like to put people in handcuffs," Schreiber said. "It usually means there's been an injustice somewhere and we're helping to right it."

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Associated Press writer Rochelle Hines contributed from Oklahoma City.

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Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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