A Spring Valley man who was so upset by immigration enforcement that he told local police last year that he would shoot and kill any Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who came to his home was found not guilty of threatening to assault a federal law enforcement officer.
In U.S. District Court in White Plains, jurors on Thursday, June 3, accepted Brallan Perez Alarcon’s claim that he was too drunk to have intended any true threat to law enforcement during multiple phone calls to Ramapo and Spring Valley police on Sept. 20, 2025.
In those calls, Perez Alarcon discussed his disdain for ICE and its activity in Spring Valley. He then said that if those (expletive) ICE agents knock on his door, “he’s gonna get shot, he’s gonna get killed.”
He testified that he had at least 48 beers as he watched social media videos of ICE activity in the day before he made the calls. He didn’t remember making the threats but when he later heard the recordings of his calls thought his comments were “horrible” and he was ashamed to have made them.
Trial testimony lasted just one day and in summations Wednesday, June 2, defense lawyer Elizabeth Quinn argued that no reasonable person would have taken Perez Alarcon’s threats seriously.
“He tried to start a political conversation and lost his inhibitions and said something stupid,” she told jurors.
But prosecutors countered that the evidence of the seriousness of the threats was how police responded. They called Perez Alarcon back to see if was serious, and he repeated the threat, saying he could get a gun if he needed to. They notified ICE of the threats and took steps to make sure Perez Alarcon didn’t have a gun and wouldn’t be able to get one.
Quinn argued that police only responded that way “to cover themselves” just in case anything happened.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jorja Knauer said that Perez Alarcon had tried to use his local police to stop ICE from carrying out their duties and threatened to harm ICE in retaliation for the arrests they had already carried out, including that of a close friend of his.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Isabelle Lelogeais said Perez Alarcon had every right under the First Amendment to criticize ICE and insult them. “We’re here because he threatened to shoot and kill law enforcement,” she told jurors. “That’s not protected free speech; that’s a crime.”
The verdict made moot a pending defense motion to dismiss the charge against Perez Alarcon which U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman said he would not rule until after the jury had decided the case.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the acquittal. The office had identified the Guatemala native as an undocumented alien although Perez Alarcon said in one of the phone calls to police that he was a citizen who had been in the United States for 25 years.
Perez Alarcon could have faced up to 10 years in prison had he been convicted. He had been detained following his arrest in September due to risk of flight and his lawyers and the U.S. Marshal’s Office did not respond to queries about whether he was released following the acquittal.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Spring Valley man who threatened to shoot, kill ICE agents acquitted
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News | USA TODAY Network
