Federal prosecutors announced charges Wednesday against two men accused of possessing Molotov cocktails during recent protests in Los Angeles in response to immigration raids.
According to an affidavit filed with a complaint by prosecutors, Emiliano Galvez, 23, threw a Molotov cocktail over a wall where sheriff’s deputies were attempting to control a crowd. The other man charged, 27-year-old Wrackkie Quiogue, was allegedly holding the incendiary when Los Angeles Police Department officers approached him. Quiogue then apparently threw it away.
Prosecutors also announced charges against two others for throwing water bottles, beer cans and other objects at federal officers.
Quiogue appeared in court on Tuesday, and the other three defendants are expected to appear in court in the coming days.
“When protesting crosses the line into violence, the penalties will be severe,” said United States Attorney Bill Essayli in a press release announcing the charges. “We will not relent in dispensing swift justice to criminals who take advantage of our country’s freedoms to engage in lawlessness.”
The complaint against Galvez also alleges that he was in the United States illegally, claiming he had overstayed a tourist visa issued in 2014. It said Galvez was arrested for being unlawfully present in the United States on June 9, and then identified as the individual seen in photographs throwing the device at a protest two days earlier, based on his tattoos.
The protests in Los Angeles were triggered after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at several local businesses, before spreading to the areas around federal buildings where people arrested in the raids were believed to be detained.
In response, President Trump has deployed National Guard troops and mobilized Marines to assist in quelling the protests, against the wishes of California officials including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).
Newsom and Bass have blamed Trump’s move as inflaming the protests. Democratic senators grilled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the legality of the deployments at a Wednesday hearing.
Bass for the first time declared a curfew on Tuesday for the portion of downtown where the protests had been most concentrated. Hundreds of people were arrested overnight, mostly over failure to disperse.