BATON ROUGE - An illegal immigrant has been senteced to six and a half years in federal prison for his role in transporting illegal drugs.

A U.S. District judge sentenced 39-year-old Silvestre Gutierrez after he pleaded guilty to attempting to transport six kilograms of cocaine through Baton Rouge in a rental vehicle.

Gutierrez and his co-conspirators were arrested in February of 2016 after officers found 15 packages of cocaine floating in the gas tank of their rental vehicle. Gutierrez also had the receipts for the items used to vaccum seal the cocaine in the gas tank of the vehicle.

Authorities later discovered Gutierrez was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and had previously been deported on two prior occasions.