A 27-year-old man from Douglas has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison for illegal transportation of undocumented noncitizens and the death of a passenger near the Mexico border in 2020.
Manuel Victor Gastelum pleaded guilty in January to the 2020 incident. According to the U.S. attorney, Gastelum picked up eight undocumented noncitizens near the border, and later began driving recklessly, causing him to lose control of the vehicle.
Another male passenger was ejected from the vehicle, and was later pronounced dead at the scene. Gastelum fled on foot, and was apprehended several miles away later that morning.
Gastelum had been previously convicted for a similar offense in 2019, when he also fled from law enforcement. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and three years of supervised release, which he violated by committing the new offense.
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In a weeklong series, KJZZ looks at Arizona’s connection to the Japanese internment policies that were instituted following Pearl Harbor, and how it ties into the broader story of racialized public policy. Gabriel Pietrorazio joined The Show for a closer look at the series. -
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Officials at the Department of Homeland Security have accused Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva of “faking outrage” over her protest at an ICE raid west of downtown Tucson last week. -
Long before World War II, the U.S. Army rounded up Native Americans onto reservations — drawing in their new boundaries. And in Arizona, the federal government once again looked to those lands for another minority population — Japanese Americans — also forcibly rounded up by the military after the Pearl Harbor bombing in 1941.
