A man posed for months as an ICE agent. A traffic stop led his girlfriend to unravel the truth.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

RogueAltGov Retweeted: https://twitter.com/RogueAltGov

A California man was going around pretending to be an ICE agent. Until his girlfriend accidentally activated his fake emergency lights and got pulled over. Police eventually searched his house and found 32 guns. Then they found five IEDs in the desert.

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True Crime

A man posed for months as an ICE agent. A traffic stop led his girlfriend to unravel the truth.

By Marwa Eltagouri May 22 at 9:17 PM [link:[e-mail]|Email the author]

Those who knew 26-year-old Matthew Johnston never questioned whether he was actually an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Johnston, after all, wore a uniform. His tactical vest bore “ICE” and “Federal Agent” patches, and he carried an ICE Counter Terrorist Unit and Gang Task Force identification card. On Facebook, he described his job as “fugitive apprehension” for the Department of Homeland Security.

As part of his facade, which lasted throughout much of 2017, Johnston once flashed his car’s blue-and-red emergency lights to chase another vehicle, which caused a collision, prosecutors said. On another occasion, he wore a uniform resembling that of an ICE agent when an individual reported a suspected undocumented immigrant. Johnston boasted about being an ICE agent to the employees and patrons of a nearby strip club, Deja Vu Showgirls, in Industry, Calif., prosecutors said.

But Johnston was not an ICE agent — and never was one, federal prosecutors say. Court documents describe the Fontana, Calif., resident’s months-long impersonation, from its inception after an argument with his ex-wife to its unraveling following a traffic stop. On Monday, Johnston pleaded guilty to possessing multiple unregistered destructive devices.
....

Marwa Eltagouri is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. She previously worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where she covered crime, immigration and neighborhood change. Follow @marwaeltagouri

[bettyellen]

1. Weird how they blame the start of his criminality on the ex wife? She was smart to be done with the

stupid fucker and yet.... reasons to blame women are always there.

[Demit]

2. Well, "they" didn't, he did. According to court records...

"Johnston admitted to officers that he pretended to be an ICE agent because his “ex-wife had insulted him in front of his daughter and told his daughter that he had done nothing with his life,” according to court records."

Your point is well taken, though. Seems to be trending, men using women as an excuse for their misdeeds.

[bettyellen]

3. They repeat this proven liars bullshit as if it was true. Same as they do w Trump. Harmful.

[Demit]

4. I agree. The reporter could've used phrasing to convey it was a bullshit whiny excuse.

Edited to add: The word "admitted" is totally wrong here. As if it's a truth that he was confessing to. And that was the reporter's word choice. Very bad.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. I think you are all missing the BIG PICTURE here

FOCUS please. It wasn't WHAT prompted him to begin living a lie. It was the fact that he was impersonating a federal law enforcement officer, with REAL power and fucking with people's lives. A lot of folks are terrified of these agents and they have every reason for this. Some of these agents are abusive thugs, who have assaulted people. ICE has hired people that are felons, served time in jail and have had multiple arrests. They were NOT picky when they hired these people. They had a quota and they wanted it filled. Fast. ICE now hangs out around court houses, churches, day care centers, schools, hospitals and lawyers offices.

FYI - Border patrol and ICE agents are legally permitted to stop and interrogate anyone who lives within 60 miles of a US border. That includes people living in WA, ID, MT, ND, MN, WI, MI, OH, PA, VT, NH, MA. Not just along the southern border with Mexico. Just this week two women were DETAINED and INTERROGATED in a northern state for no other reason than they were speaking in Spanish to each other. In a gas station. And the agent had no problem appearing on camera to say so. These women are AMERICAN citizens.

I was born in this country, but even I would not want to be questioned by one of these power-drunk thugs.

[bettyellen]

7. Women have been cited as the cause of mass shootings and other attacks this year- and it does matter

A great deal that these shit heads keep using women as excuses for this. It’s a common media fuck up that promotes this blame women bullshit. Of course it’s a shitty scary thing, it takes nothing away from that to discuss the media allowing women to be implicated once again in this shit. If you don’t give a shit about that, move along.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

9. That's not what I meant

Women are all too abused by LEOs in general. Not a day goes by when some woman some where is harassed, assaulted, arrested by power-hungry cops getting their rocks off for threatening women. Especially women of color. And too little is being done about it in my opinion. The good-old boy network protects its own even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

And blaming his wife for his piss-poor behavior is BS. I'd be willing to bet that he's assaulted or threatened her, too.

[bettyellen]

10. And a decent reporter would have spoken to others about his marriage if they were going to report on

it. They are just given a proven liar a microphone and it’s disturbing as hell.

[Demit]

8. Yes, we know that. But thanks for explaining it to us anyway.

We're pointing out something that apparently goes right by you.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

11. Trust me, it did not go by me

But this is where I am coming from: I have worked with the immigrant community for some time and have heard the horror stories of how ICE harasses them, stalks them, threatens their children, and agents have even broken into their homes, businesses and vehicles. Listening to these frightened people (especially the DACA folks) tell these horrorific stories of abuse of power infuriates me. Immigration lawyers are even telling me that clients with whom they have been working for some time are now just "disappearing" at an alarming rate. Either they are in hiding or have been apprehended. And people who used to share information are clamming up out of fear of federal or local arrest.

I didn't mean that women are not being adversely affected.

[Demit]

14. Thanks for explaining it again.

We are most grateful.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

15. Have you ever worked with immigrants ?

Because you seem to have a singularity of vision on this topic. Many of the immigrants I have worked with ARE WOMEN. Women who are single or single with children. Terrified of law enforcement because of what they've experienced, or what they have seen other women experience.

I could go on for hours about these women, but it seems to me I'd only be wasting my time as you are too obsessed with refusing to see anything beyond your narrow spectrum of who deserves compassion.

[bettyellen]

6. Exactly! Thank you. Also the framing as if this was any sort of reason....

I assure you his ex didn’t want him impersonating LEO. She wanted him to get his shit together and do something for real, not to fake it. He knew that- he is lying.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

12. Of course, he's lying

Does he think that blaming his wife is going to make the law go any easier on him ? Not in this country. If that's the best defense he can muster, he might as well just bypass the trial and go straight to jail, where he might meet up with some of the people whose lives he's damaged. THAT would be poetic justice.

[bettyellen]

13. Which is why if they're going to present his lame excuses, they should frame them as exactly that.

Too many men get stupid ideas about doing extraordinarily stupid things and get a pass when they claim they did it for love. Most women only want someone kind, honest and responsible- these men are none of those things.