Venezuelan man sentenced to 4 years for taking federal agent's gun during Utica arrest

A federal judge has sentenced a Venezuelan man to four years in federal prison for assaulting a federal agent and pulling the agent's gun from its holster during an arrest in Utica, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced Friday.

Arnoldo Jose Marquez-Pulido, 33, pleaded guilty in May to assaulting a federal law enforcement officer and grabbing the officer's firearm. The 48-month sentence was handed down this week.

Officers assigned to the Homeland Security Task Force were watching businesses in the Utica area after learning that people working as delivery drivers were in the country illegally, according to court documents described in the announcement. Agents saw a car registered to Marquez-Pulido leave a parking lot at one of the businesses and tried to pull him over, prosecutors said. He stopped briefly, then drove off at a high rate of speed. Agents turned off their emergency equipment to avoid a dangerous chase and followed at a distance.

When Marquez-Pulido returned to the business, prosecutors said, he ran and ignored an agent's commands to stop, and the agent tackled him as he fled inside. Marquez-Pulido resisted and struck the agent in the face with his elbow, then removed the agent's Glock 19 pistol from its holster and briefly wielded it before losing control of the weapon, according to court documents. Other task force officers and agents arrived and recovered the gun. Marquez-Pulido kept resisting and had to be restrained.

One agent's elbow, knees, hands and face were injured. A second agent hurt his knee. Both needed hospital treatment.

Prosecutors said Marquez-Pulido entered the U.S. through the U.S.-Mexico border in April 2024 with no visa or other travel document, and that the government paroled him into the country that year.

"This illegal alien sped away from federal agents and then created a potentially deadly fight when he grabbed an agent's gun," U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. said. "He should never have been in our country."

Jared Murphey, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Detroit, said Marquez-Pulido turned a lawful enforcement action into a violent confrontation, and that HSI and its partners would keep pursuing people who put agents at risk.

Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case. Prosecutors brought it under Operation Take Back America, a Justice Department initiative the agency says targets illegal immigration, cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and violent crime.