Biography
Christian Damian Cerna-Camacho, a United States citizen from Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, was 28 when federal prosecutors accused him of punching a Customs and Border Protection officer during the June 7, 2025 protest against immigration raids in Paramount, California.
He was not arrested at the protest. Agents came for him four days later, on June 11, 2025, pinning his car between two unmarked vehicles on Whittier Boulevard in Boyle Heights with guns drawn and deploying a chemical device while his wife and their two young children were inside. The Department of Homeland Security then published its own high-resolution video of the operation on social media, calling him a “violent rioter” — footage which in fact showed him surrendering at once. Bail was refused at his first appearance, and he spent about a week in custody before being released to house arrest with GPS monitoring.
He pleaded guilty on December 16, 2025 to assault on a federal officer, a felony carrying up to eight years. At sentencing in 2026 the court rejected that framing. A federal judge described the department’s publicity campaign as a “vindictive effort” and “extrajudicial punishment”, the felony was reduced to a misdemeanor count of simple assault on a federal officer, and he received probation rather than prison.
