It does not come as a shock to some that the U.S. Department of Justice handed down its harshest sentence in the Jan. 6 prosections to Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader charged for leading the 2021 violent and deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross told theGrio it is not “surprising” that Tarrio, an Afro-Cuban, received the highest penalty out of all of the insurrectionists charged and sentenced for crimes committed on Jan. 6 in an effort to stop the certifying of votes in the 2020 election that declared Joe Biden the 46th president of the United States

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“It showcases that the American justice system works the way the American justice system always has – by penalizing people of color, Black and brown people, at much higher sentencing or sentencing guidelines than they do anyone else,” she said. “This is not something that’s new in this country.”

She added, “All that this shows is the truth behind the fact that justice does choose which color gets the lowest amount of sentencing if they get sentenced at all, and we’ve seen that with the Jan. 6 rioters and orchestrators.”

On Tuesday, Tarrio, 39, was sentenced to 22 years behind bars and 36 months of supervised release for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Jan. 6 attempted coup.

In 2020, it became public knowledge that the Proud Boys were tied to former President Donald Trump when he called them by name and gave them a directive during a presidential debate to “stand back and stand by.”