Riverside County family says off-duty immigration agent held teenage son at gunpoint

An off-duty law enforcement officer was arrested in Riverside County last week after pulling a firearm on a 17-year-old and detaining him on the side of the road.

Gerardo Rodriguez, 46, was known by neighbors to be an agent employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol, said Greg Kirakosian, a lawyer representing the teenager.

An ICE spokesperson wrote that Rodriguez is not employed by the agency. A CBP spokesperson said in a statement: “This matter is under investigation.”

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The teenager had driven by Rodriguez’s home in Temecula to drop friends off at a nearby house at around 10 p.m. on Nov. 10, Kirakosian said. When he drove back he was stopped by Rodriguez, who pulled a gun. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department was dispatched at around 10:40 p.m., according to a news release.

Rodriguez was taken into custody without incident the next day and charged with assault by a public officer, child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon, the Sheriff’s Department said. He posted bail the same day and his next court date is scheduled for Dec. 26.

The teenager and his family, who are all U.S. citizens, “were already scared to begin with” before the incident, Kirakosian said.

“They’re Mexican Americans, you know, in Southern California right now, and there’s ICE raids happening left and right,” he said.

Security camera footage from a neighbor shows Rodriguez “in the middle of the street, kind of marching down with a gun in his hand,” Kirakosian said.

“It’s not like he pulled it out in an emergency. He had it out. He was walking down the street with a gun in his hand,” he said.

As he sees the truck approach, Rodriguez walks toward the middle of the street, pulls out a gun and points it at the vehicle.

“Stop, stop. Slow down. Freeze. Police,” Rodriguez yells.

The teenager feared he would be shot, Kirakosian said, so he stopped. Rodriguez ordered him to park, again identifying himself as police, then approached the driver’s side and pointed his gun at the teenager. Rodriguez interrogated him, asking where he and his family were from and demanded identification, Kirakosian said, for nearly 20 minutes.

In the video, Rodriguez argues with the teenager, claiming he was speeding down the street. He repeatedly claims the teenager almost ran him over.

The teenager’s friends, who were still at a house nearby, saw the incident and notified parents who were also at the home and approached Rodriguez, eventually persuading him to let the teenager go, according to Kirakosian. They called the teenager’s mother, who immediately grabbed her son’s passport to prove his citizenship, he said. By the time the mother had arrived, Rodriguez had left, and they then called the police.

Police obtained a search warrant and confiscated Rodriguez’s security camera footage and the gun when they arrested him, Kirakosian said.

The incident is the latest in a growing number of armed confrontations involving ICE agents or people posing as them confronting people and demanding identification. An ICE agent was confronted by police when he pulled a gun on a woman in Santa Ana this month, and multiple ICE and Border Patrol shootings have taken place in and outside Southern California in recent months.

Kirakosian said this incident likely resulted in an arrest because the agent was off duty.

“You got ICE agents who apparently feel so emboldened by what they do on a day-to-day basis, they’re essentially treating their own neighborhoods as an area they need to start investigating,” Kirakosian said.