The anti-ICE rioter caught on viral video pelting Customs and Border Protection vehicles with rocks and chunks of concrete during last summer’s Paramount melee is headed to federal prison.
Elpidio Reyna, 42, of Compton, was sentenced Friday to 36 months by U.S. District Judge Fernando L. Aenlle-Rocha for assaulting and injuring a federal officer during a June 2025 riot in Paramount, California.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, Reyna pleaded guilty in February to one felony count of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon resulting in bodily injury.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli wrote on X:
“Today, Elpidio Reyna was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for hurling rocks at a federal vehicle during last year’s anti-immigration enforcement riot in Paramount, shattering a window and injuring an officer.
Like I said before: If you hit a federal agent, we will hit you with a federal felony.”
🚨 Sentenced to Prison
Today, Elpidio Reyna was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for hurling rocks at a federal vehicle during last year’s anti-immigration enforcement riot in Paramount, shattering a window and injuring an officer.
Like I said before: If you hit a federal… https://t.co/psPhSEztWG
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) September 11, 2026
On June 7, 2025, federal officers were staging a joint immigration enforcement operation near a Home Depot in Paramount, a Los Angeles County sanctuary-city suburb.
A mob answered the operation the way the Southern California left answers every ICE action: by blocking the street, lighting debris on fire, and turning rocks into weapons.
Reyna was the one in the helmet. Video circulating that weekend showed him gathering projectiles off the median and launching them at a convoy of marked and unmarked government vehicles occupied by CBP officers.
One rock shattered a window and cut Officer R.T. on the forehead. Prosecutors said the attack easily could have killed someone.
The Gateway Pundit reported the assault the same weekend and followed the manhunt as the FBI put a $50,000 bounty on the helmeted rock-thrower.
Two days later, Cristina Laila reported that the FBI had a name: Elpidio Reyna. Agents raided his Compton home. He was already gone.
DHS and the FBI put him on the Most Wanted list. Officials said his record already included felony burglary, felony drug sales, using or selling marijuana to a minor, DUI, and driving on a suspended license. He ran to Mexico.
Mexican authorities grabbed him in Sinaloa. On July 23, 2025, he surrendered at the San Ysidro port of entry. The officer who took him into custody was a U.S. Border Patrol agent who had been inside one of the vehicles Reyna smashed a month earlier.
Reyna later told the court his outburst was “sudden and emotional and fueled by alcohol,” driven by anger over U.S. immigration policy. Prosecutors shredded that line.
Defense filings tried to walk back the “concrete” description and recast him as just another concerned neighbor picking up palm-sized rocks. The government, the FBI, and the viral video told a different story. He pleaded guilty anyway.
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