Lucio Landeros-Valdez will spend the next two decades in a federal prison for selling a pound of methamphetamine to an undercover police officer last winter in Ontario. Federal prosecutors say those drugs were going to be sold in Fruitland.

The 24-year-old Landeros-Valdez, who is from Sinaloa, Culiacan, in Mexico, is in the U.S. illegally, along with two other men who he was arrested with in March, according to U.S. Department of Justice reports.

Federal prosecutors say Landeros-Valdez and two other men drove from Phoenix to Ontario in March 2011 with a pound of 94 percent pure methamphetamine. It was after they sold an undercover officer one ounce of methamphetamine in Ontario that officers found almost a pound of meth hidden in a box of Tide detergent found inside their car, according to reports.

An Idaho jury found Landeros-Valdez guilty in November of a charge of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. On Tuesday Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill sentenced Landeros-Valdez to serve 20 years in prison. Landeros-Valdez will be deported as soon as he leaves prison, officials say. 

An Idaho jury found co-defendant Arreola-Beltran, 24, also of Sinaloa, Culiacan, Mexico, guilty in November of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. He will be sentenced later this year.

The third man involved, co-defendant Jose Gabriel Virgen, 34, of Nayarit, Mexico, pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to possess methamphetamine with intent to distribute late last year and was sentenced in December to time served in jail, since his arrest in March, according to federal court records.

U.S. Attorney for Idaho Wendy Olsen praised the cooperation between Idaho State Police, the Ontario (Oregon) Police Department, and High Desert Drug Task Force officers who worked the case.

“Twenty years in federal prison sends the strong message that we will not tolerate the trafficking of this dangerous, addictive drug in Idaho's communities,” Olsen said Tuesday.