Patino-Salazar

MEMORANDUM

Santos Patino-Salazar (“Patino-Salazar”) appeals his sentence for illegal reentry into the United States following deportation, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 . We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. *749 § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742 (a) and we affirm.

Patino-Salazar pled guilty to one count of illegal reentry into the United States after deportation, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326 . At sentencing, the district court determined that his previous conviction for an aggravated felony increased the statutory maximum sentence to twenty years imprisonment. See 8 U.S.C. § 1326 (b)(2). The court sentenced him to fifty-seven months in prison, well within the statutory maximum. Patino-Salazar alleges that the district court erred in sentencing him above the two-year statutory maximum of section 1326(a) because he did not admit during his guilty plea, nor did the government prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had been previously convicted of an aggravated felony.

Section 1326(b), which allows for a twenty year maximum sentence where the defendant was previously convicted of an aggravated felony, is a penalty provision of the statute, not a separate crime nor an…