Late Friday, two Los Angeles protesters were found guilty of stalking a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after they followed him to his Baldwin Park home.
In two verdicts after a week-long trial, Ashley Brown and Cynthia Raygoza were each found guilty of one count of stalking and acquitted of one count of conspiracy to disclose protected personal information about a federal employee. The third defendant, Sandra Samane, was acquitted of both charges.
Jurors deliberated for about nine hours Friday night before reaching their verdict. As U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson read the verdict, those in the audience began crying, tears silently streaming down their faces.
The incident stems from an incident on August 28, 2025, when three women, who regularly participate in protests against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies in Southern California, pursued an unmarked government vehicle as it drove away from a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles. The women said they believed they were following the vehicle to immigration control, but it ended up at an ICE officer’s home.
Some supporters in the gallery said that week that the incident tested the limits of protest against the Trump administration. Following ICE and Border Patrol agents to enforcement sites is a common protest tactic in Los Angeles and other cities, but this incident appears to be the first time protesters have confronted federal agents in their own homes.
Under the First Assistant U.S. Attorney. Bill Esseri, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has aggressively prosecuted protesters for assaulting and obstructing immigration officials, filing more than 100 cases. He pleaded guilty to 23 of those charges, but by Friday he had lost every case that went to trial.
“Thank you to the jury for bringing justice to the instigators who violated the law and endangered the safety of this federal employee and his family,” Essayri said in a post on X. “Peaceful protests are protected by the Constitution, but political violence and unlawful intimidation are not.”
Raigoza, 38, of Riverside, and Brown, 38, of Aurora, Colo., could each face up to five years in federal prison, Essayli said. Their sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 8th.
Video played in court showed Brown, Leygoza and Samane chasing the agent’s car from downtown Los Angeles to Baldwin Park. The incident was livestreamed on the popular Instagram account ice_out_ofla.
As I was driving, I heard women discussing the possibility that the car was heading toward immigration enforcement. They also called on their Instagram followers to respond to Baldwin Park to protest the possible attack. This tactic has been used repeatedly in cities where the Trump administration has aggressively cracked down on immigration.
But the agent they were following, identified in court as Rogelio Reyes Huitzirin, had gone home. During the trial, Wizirin told jurors that he was meeting his wife and two young children for a planned “surprise” when he noticed Brown, Raigosa and Samane in the area wearing masks.
Video played in court showed Huitzirin getting out of the car alongside his wife, holding up his camera phone, and the two groups got into a heated argument.
Raigoza called Huitzirin a “pendejo” and a “race traitor” and yelled at onlookers, “Your neighbors are ICE agents!” She also called gay slurs in Spanish, threatened to pour coffee on his face and called his Latina wife “white,” according to prosecutors and footage played in court.
“I was disgusted that my wife and I were subjected to that level of racism,” Witsilin said in court this week.
In response, video footage shows him getting very close to protesters and then physically preventing them from leaving the area until Baldwin Park police arrived. Wizirin claimed that Raigoza “assaulted” him, but there is no video evidence of that.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against Mr. Raigoza in December, records show.
Wizilin said he was concerned the women may have weapons, but no weapons were recovered at the scene and no one was injured.
Federal prosecutors soon charged the women with conspiracy and stealing the identities of federal employees, a de facto federal poison ban. “Doxing” is a slang term that refers to disclosing an individual’s personal information online.
After the incident, the Instagram account published the Chelsfield Street address and also shared a screen capture of an image of Wizilin posted by the ‘ice_out_ofla’ account. The post featured a photo of Mr. Wizilin and called him a “scumbag,” according to images displayed by prosecutors during the trial. It was not clear who owned the other account.
For the record:
February 28, 2026 11:05 AM A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the address on the agent’s block was published by the ‘ice_out_ofla’ account. This address was published by another account, which shared a photo of the agent published by the “ice_out_ofla” account.
Homeland Security Investigator Robert Kurtz acknowledged in court that he incorrectly listed the address published by the protester’s account as that of Wizirin in multiple reports and affidavits. Charges of leaking personal information were dropped after he reported his mistake to prosecutors late last year. But prosecutors added stalking charges instead, and Brown and Raigosa were ultimately convicted.
Mr Wizirin told jurors his family has been living in fear ever since the incident. They moved from Baldwin Park. One of her sons chose to be home-schooled, fearing a backlash. And his youngest son, who has autism, is no longer able to access some needed school services. His wife, who broke down in tears on the witness stand this week, said she could barely sleep most nights after the incident and was undergoing treatment.
However, under cross-examination, Mr. Wizirin admitted that no other protesters came to his home after that day and that he never heard from the defendants again. Baldwin Park Police Lt. Evan Martin told the Times that “there have been no other incidents of a similar nature or related to this incident” at the Chelsfield Street home.
Despite concerns that her home was no longer safe, Ms Witsirin admitted in court that she had not sold the property and that several relatives still lived there.
Attorneys for Brown, Raigoza and Samane spent the week arguing that the government’s case was disproportionate. The defendants did not know who Wizilin was and had no intention of locating his home address or harassing him. Lawyers also said Mr Wizirin was the one who approached the women on Chelsfield Street and started the confrontation.
“They never said his name. They didn’t know his name. The agents made this situation all about themselves,” Raigoza’s lawyer Gregory Nicolaisen said in closing arguments.
Nicolaisen and other attorneys argued at trial that it was impossible to prove stalking because federal criminal law requires a pattern of behavior to convict a defendant. He said the women only interacted with agents for one day during the 90-minute incident.
“That’s not stalking. This case is not over yet,” he said, vowing to appeal.
Brown declined to speak to reporters outside the courtroom. Samane’s attorney, Robert Bernstein, congratulated his client on his acquittal.
“Freedom of speech still exists in this country,” he said. “The federal government cannot criminalize political speech protesting ICE activities.”
Trump administration officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that revealing the names of ICE and Border Patrol agents could lead to harassment, but criminal charges are rare in such cases. It is a federal crime to release certain protected information, such as a federal employee’s home address, Social Security number, or telephone number, for the purpose of inciting harassment or violence.
However, this trial revealed far more personal information than the alleged personal information leak case. Protesters never mentioned his name on the livestream and did not publish his actual home address. During the three-day trial, prosecutors released Mr. Witsilin’s full name, his wife’s full name, the names and ages of his children, his current and former home address, and details about Mr. Witsilin’s background as a federal employee and veteran.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to answer questions about whether prosecutors considered how much more information about Huitzirin to reveal before taking the case to trial.
