L.A. feds ramp up ‘doxxing’ charges; ICE protesters fear the effects

The masked protesters screaming at a federal agent outside his home was the type of scene Trump administration officials had long feared.

Cynthia Raygoza, Ashleigh Brown and Sandra Samane followed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer from the downtown L.A. Metropolitan Detention Center to his Baldwin Park residence last August. The off-duty ICE agent’s unmasked face and the name of the street he lived on were broadcast to more than 50,000 followers on a livestream from the popular “ice_out_ofla” Instagram account.

With the agent’s wife and two of his children nearby, Raygoza cursed at the agent and threatened to hit him while screaming to onlookers that “your neighbor is an ICE agent,” according to video of the incident. Minutes later, another woman shouted out an address near the agent’s home.

The agent, Rogelio Reyes Huitzilin, said the incident forever changed his family. Testifying in court last month, Huitzilin said they moved away out of fear the protesters would be back. His son withdrew from high school. His wife told jurors she was convinced protesters would return because of the “climate” of anger toward immigration agents.

But Baldwin Park police said there were no repeat incidents at the agent’s home. No one was injured and no weapons were found. In court, Huitzilin said several of his relatives still live at the same Chesfield Street property, despite his claims it was “compromised.”

First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli has vowed to come down hard on protestors who dox federal agents.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

The most severe consequences were faced by Raygoza and Brown, who said they simply were trying to follow Huitzilin to an immigration raid, not his home. They didn’t even know his name on the day of the incident and got into a dispute only after he approached them.

The pair were indicted on charges of “doxxing” Huitzilin and convicted of stalking him at trial last week. They face up to five years in federal prison.

Department of Homeland Security officials repeatedly have expressed alarm about the potential for agents to be “doxxed,” a slang term for revealing a person’s private information online. Fears that identifying officers could lead to violence has, in part, motivated the practice of keeping agents’ faces hidden behind masks.

But incidents in which the publication of an agent’s name has led to an in-person clash are rare, and criminal prosecutions for “doxxing” are even rarer. The charge has been brought by federal prosecutors only five times since President Trump was reelected, according to a review of court records, and all of those cases were filed in Los Angeles.

Critics say the danger faced by agents whose names are made public is overblown, almost always limited to harsh and violent words lobbed from behind a laptop or phone screen. By prosecutors pivoting to using stalking charges against demonstrators, some fear they have found a new weapon against those who oppose ICE.

“We are now entering uncharted territory in the Department of Justice’s enforcement practices,” said Greg Nicolaysen, who represented Raygoza at trial.

Nicolaysen said the federal stalking statute is “vague” and much easier to prove than the “doxxing” charge that initially was brought in the Baldwin Park case. While Trump administration officials have used “doxxing” to describe incidents in which any information about an agent is made public, the criminal statute is much more specific.

To win a doxxing case, prosecutors must prove someone published a federal employee’s protected personal information for the purposes of threatening them or inciting violence. An agent’s name, alone, is not protected information.

Residents confront ICE and Border Patrol agents on Atlantic Boulevard in the city of Bell last June.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Prosecutors dismissed doxxing charges in the Baldwin Park case after a Homeland Security investigator told the court the address that protesters shouted on the livestream was a few houses away from where Reyes lived. Jurors acquitted all three women of conspiring to dox Huitzilin. Samane also was acquitted of the stalking charge.

But Nicolaysen and others worry the stalking convictions against Raygoza and Brown could serve as a pretext to criminalize the practice of following and observing ICE enforcement actions known as “rapid response,” in which demonstrators identify the site of an immigration raid and call others to protest. In footage played in court showing the women following an unmarked vehicle, they can be heard discussing their plan to observe an ICE raid.

Ashleigh Brown’s stalking conviction could chill efforts to respond to immigration enforcement actions, advocates fear.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Where some see a form of protest, federal prosecutors allege intent to cause harm.

“Justice has been served against two agitators who stalked a federal employee, livestreamed it on social media, and traumatized both the victim and his family,” First Asst. U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said this week. “Our Constitution protects peaceful protest — not political violence and unlawful intimidation.”

Essayli declined to be interviewed for this story and his spokesman declined to answer specific questions. Raygoza and Brown plan to challenge their convictions.

Federal officials provided little evidence to support claims that agents whose names are made public face danger. Asked to provide examples of doxxing incidents, Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Bis pointed to cases in which ICE agents received threatening phone calls or online messages.

“I hope your kids get deported by accident. How do you sleep? F— you. Did you hear what happened to the Nazis after World War II?” a Homeland Security transcript of one voicemail read. “Because it’s what’s going to happen to your family.”

“The disgusting doxxing of our officers put their lives and their families in serious danger,” Bis said, adding that ICE agents face “a coordinated campaign of violence.”

Bis did not identify an incident, aside from the Baldwin Park case, in which an agent whose name was made public was confronted in person.

Defense attorneys for the accused challenged the wisdom of prosecuting “doxxing” cases, as the alleged victims will be required to testify and publicize the very information they were trying to protect.

“They put his full name, his wife’s name, their address, all in the public record. None of which was done in the so-called doxxing,” said attorney Robert Bernstein, who represented Samane. “They doxxed their own agent by proceeding to trial.”

In other high-profile cases in California in which ICE and Border Patrol agents’ names became public, they said they faced harassment and threats.

Isaiah Hodgson was outed as a Border Patrol agent last June after he was filmed, unmasked, taking part in the conroversial arrest of Adrian Martinez, a U.S. citizen accused of interfering with immigration enforcement. Hodgson was arrested the next month after allegedly getting in a drunken fight with Long Beach police outside a Shoreline Village bar. During his detention, he bemoaned the leak of his identity.

“Have you ever had your personal information put up online and on the f— news?” he said, according to body camera footage released by Long Beach police in response to a public records request. “Have you ever had f— people stand up at your parents’ house because you’re over here in Los Angeles doing everything?”

Despite Hodgson’s distressed comments, it was unclear if protesters actually went to his family’s Hemet home. A log of calls for service released in response to a public records request shows the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department visited Hodgson’s home only once after his name became public. That was the day he was found dead from a cocaine overdose last year.

Public records show Hodgson’s parents live at the same address. They did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Hodgson also said he’d been receiving “death threats,” according to a coroner’s report made public after his overdose. The sheriff’s department declined to comment.

Brian Palacios, an off-duty ICE agent who shot and killed Keith Porter Jr. in Northridge on New Year’s Eve, also had his name exposed after The Times reported on court filings linking him to the shooting. His attorney, Stacie Halperin, said her client has faced “a tremendous amount of stress” after his name was published but did not face in-person threats.

Palacios moved out of the apartment complex where the shooting happened shortly after, Halperin said, because ICE officials warned him his “life might be in danger.”

Halperin, who said she personally disapproves of ICE’s tactics under President Trump, fears people are unfairly taking out their anger on ICE agents as opposed to the administration ordering their actions

“The general public could treat people fairly and give them all due process,” she said. “Justice is for all, not just who you choose to give it to.”

Bernstein said he fears prosecutors will become more aggressive in pursuing doxxing and stalking charges to justify the administration’s claims that federal agents are in constant danger.

“I do think a lot of this is performative,” he said. “All for an audience of one: our president.”

Times researcher Cary Schneider contributed to this report.