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The more than six-year prison sentencing of illegal alien Jose Melgar-Rivas for causing serious injuries to a federal officer by dragging him with his vehicle shows why the agent who shot activist Renee Good feared for his life, an expert told Fox News Digital.
U.S. Attorney Robert J. Troester announced Tuesday that Melgar-Rivas had been sentenced to serve 78 months in federal prison for assaulting, resisting or impeding a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, resulting in bodily injury.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, lauded the sentencing as “great news.” She noted, however, that “unfortunately, this is just one of many examples of either aliens and/or rioters, illegal obstructionists, assaulting federal agents with vehicles.”
She pointed to a dramatic rise in vehicular assaults on federal immigration enforcement officers, most notably including an attack on ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who was dragged by an illegal immigrant’s vehicle in a similar incident in Minnesota. That agent later shot and killed activist Renee Good when she allegedly accelerated her vehicle at him in a confrontation with law enforcement.
Ries called for Melgar-Rivas’ sentencing to be “announced far and wide.” She said that “others need to know that there are, in fact, consequences for both obstructing ICE carrying out their lawful federal enforcement duties, but also there are severe consequences for assaulting and harming ICE agents [and] federal agents.”
According to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma, Melgar-Rivas, a Honduran national who entered the country illegally, attempted to evade arrest by placing his car in drive and accelerating during a struggle with agents. The office said that an ICE officer became caught in the vehicle’s door and was dragged down the roadway, resulting in him sustaining “multiple, serious injuries.”
The incident occurred on July 15, 2025, in Oklahoma City. Melgar-Rivas was arrested several hours later. He was charged by a federal grand jury with assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer resulting in bodily injury and pleaded guilty on September 30, 2025.
The office said Melgar-Rivas will be deported after serving his 78-month sentence.
In response to the sentencing announcement, Ries emphasized that “there are severe consequences for assaulting and harming ICE agents, federal agents, and this sentence expresses that.”
Ries pointed to a DHS statistic from February stating there have been 180 vehicular attacks on federal agents, constituting a 3,300 percent increase in vehicular attacks against ICE since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office.
Ries linked this rise in attacks to what she referred to as an organized and concerted effort to “cause division and disruption in the U.S.” and to “prevent deportations to keep the left in political power.”
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“Clearly the word went out from trainers, the organizers on the left, who instruct both aliens and rioters, protesters, obstructionists on how to interfere with federal agents conducting their job,” said Ries. “All of these people who are rioting and protesting and obstructing are directed to do so. Perhaps they swap their signs out now for ‘hands off Iran,’ because many of these protests, whether it’s anti-ICE, hands off Iran, hands-off Venezuela, et cetera, et cetera, it’s the same funders, it’s the same organizers, in some cases it’s the very same so-called protesters.”
“None of it is organic, and we need to keep attention on that fact,” she added.
One such attack rocked the nation in January when it resulted in Ross shooting and killing Good in Minneapolis.
According to DHS, criminal illegal immigrant and sex offender Roberto Carlos Munoz-Guatemala dragged Ross 50 yards with his car in Bloomington, Minnesota, while trying to evade arrest. During a traffic stop, Munoz-Guatemala refused to exit his vehicle and tried to flee law enforcement. The department said the ICE officer still had his arm inside Munoz-Guatemala’s vehicle as the illegal immigrant tried to drive away. Ross was hospitalized due to his injuries and received 33 stitches in his right arm and left hand.
Ries said that less discussed is that this rise in violent obstruction “takes a lot of psychological toll and emotional toll on agents.”
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“There’s clearly a pattern of aliens and obstructionists using their vehicles to interfere with and even threaten ICE agents. And as an ICE agent or federal agent, when you know that, if yet another car is put into drive and is aimed in your direction, then that goes to the mindset of that agent.”
“We live in the age of rage, where so many people just want to be outraged at anything. And unfortunately, they become useful tools of these leftist leaders and funders to do their bidding,” she said.
This, Ries said, is why it is so critical that people understand the serious risks and consequences of attacking agents or interfering with operations.
“If [Good] had not been interfering with ICE agents doing their job that day, she’d still be alive. If she complied with agents’ orders to get out of the car, she would still be alive,” she said. “So, this news of this sentencing needs to go to those in Minneapolis and around the country to comply with officers, to not interfere.”
Fox News Digital’s Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
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