Fifth Circuit Upholds 15-Month Sentence for El Paso ICE Rooftop Standoff in First Ruling on "Major Disruption"

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on June 29 affirmed a 15-month prison sentence for a Venezuelan man who joined a three-and-a-half-hour rooftop standoff at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in El Paso, Texas. The ruling marks the first time the court has interpreted what counts as a "major disruption" to a federal detention facility under the federal sentencing guidelines. A three-judge panel upheld the sentence of Jhonaker Manuel Arrieta, a Venezuelan citizen with no authorization to enter or remain in the United States, who was held at the El Paso Service Processing Center while he awaited removal. Arrieta pleaded guilty to mutiny under 18 U.S.C. § 1792 after a January 27, 2025 incident, and the only question on appeal was how the sentencing guidelines classified what he did. Court records show that on January 27, 2025, while other detainees diverted the officers, Arrieta and five others knotted bed sheets, towels, and shirts into an improvised rope and climbed onto a canopy roof above the recreation area. The roof stands approximately the height of a two-story building and has no secured rim. Video captured the six men placing t-shirts around their faces and refusing repeated commands from guards, ICE agents, and staff to come down. Six men held the roof for more than three and a half hours. They demanded release and media attention, and they threatened to jump off if officers came near. For more than two and a half hours, the El Paso Crisis Negotiation Team tried to talk them down. When that failed, the El Paso Special Response Team fired sublethal munitions, after which the men descended by ladder. Arrieta had pleaded guilty, so the appeal turned on his sentence. The guideline that covers the offense, U.S.S.G. § 2P1.3, sets three base offense levels: level 22 if the offense created a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury, level 16 if it involved a major disruption to the operation of an institution, and level 10 otherwise. The presentence report and the government pressed for level 22, arguing the detainees risked serious injury if they fell. Arrieta urged level 10, the residual tier, and named level 16 only as a fallback. The district court chose level 16 and sentenced him to 15 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment. On appeal, Arrieta minimized the episode as a non-violent protest, in his words "something like a sit-in," and argued the six-hour lockdown was a mere administrative disruption, no different from a closure due to bad weather or repair work. He did not dispute that the lockdown interrupted visitation, attorney-client visits, and meal services. The panel rejected that argument. Judge Don R. Willett, writing for the court, said the scale of the response showed the disruption was major: two specialized teams, sublethal munitions, and a six-hour lockdown that cut detainees off from their lawyers. The middle tier turns on the disruption's operational magnitude, the court held, not on whether the conduct was violent. Reading a requirement of violence or a separate showing of serious-injury risk into the middle tier, Willett wrote, would collapse it into the top one. The opinion is the Fifth Circuit's first reading of the phrase "major disruption to the operation of an institution" under the guideline. The court noted it had not construed the phrase before, and it pointed to a 1996 Fourth Circuit decision, United States v. Doyle, that had upheld the same tier after a two-hour disturbance involving fires, heavy smoke, and danger to officers. The published opinion is now binding precedent across the Fifth Circuit, though the panel declined to set a precise line between levels 10 and 16 and held only that this episode qualified. Arrieta's sentence stands: 15 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $100 special assessment.