SAN DIEGO — A San Diego man who impersonated a U.S. Border Patrol agent in an effort to interfere with the government’s deportation operations was sentenced today to six months in federal prison.
Jaime Ernesto Alvarez Gonzalez, an undocumented immigrant who has lived in San Diego for the past 38 years, pleaded guilty to federal charges of impersonating a federal officer and illegally possessing firearms.
Prosecutors said that on Jan. 8, Alvarez Gonzalez followed a Border Patrol agent while driving a pickup truck outfitted to resemble a law enforcement vehicle. The truck displayed a U.S. Border Patrol sticker on the windshield, a law enforcement-style light bar, handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror and a license plate identifying it as a “ferderal truck.”
According to prosecutors, Alvarez Gonzalez also wore a face mask and a “thin green line” hat to resemble a Border Patrol agent.
In sentencing papers, prosecutors wrote that the Border Patrol agent was “running an active deportation mission” but became confused after seeing Alvarez Gonzalez’s vehicle and “was forced to deconflict for federal and state authorities for public safety concerns, but his mission was blown.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said deconfliction is a law enforcement process used to prevent officers from mistakenly identifying one another as armed suspects while operating in the same area.
Later that day, federal agents encountered Alvarez Gonzalez in the Linda Vista neighborhood. Prosecutors said he yelled obscenities at the agents, told them to leave Linda Vista and directed three other vehicles to follow the departing agents.
He was arrested about a week later. Prosecutors said he was found with what appeared to be an FBI access card and told agents he worked with “an anti-ICE organization dedicated to interfering with ICE operations.”
Defense attorney Cindy Muro wrote in sentencing papers that Alvarez Gonzalez regrets his actions but believed he was “doing what he could to protect his neighbors.”
Muro argued that her client’s conduct was influenced by increased immigration enforcement.
“Mr. Alvarez Gonzalez witnessed people who looked like him being picked up on the streets by ICE. He saw the news about parents being arrested by ICE as they dropped their children off at school. He heard about his neighbors who were too afraid to leave their homes in fear that they, too, might be deported,” Muro wrote.
She also noted that the Jan. 8 offense occurred one day after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by ICE officers and that her client had seen news reports of the incident.
Alvarez Gonzalez has already served much of his six-month sentence while in custody, meaning his remaining prison term is expected to be brief. However, the conviction will result in his deportation.
According to Muro, Alvarez Gonzalez came to the United States as a teenager and later overstayed his visa.
“He not only faces a custodial sanction and felony on his record, but he will be deported from the country he’s called home for almost all of his life,” Muro wrote.
