A Los Angeles man was in federal custody on Tuesday after the authorities said he threatened security guards and lobbed two malfunctioning Molotov cocktails into a federal office building.
Jose Francisco Jovel, 54, was charged with attempted malicious damage of federal property after being arrested in the incident, which occurred on Monday outside a complex of federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles that include local offices of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, Mr. Jovel, a U.S. citizen, complained about the government’s immigration policy and told investigators his actions were a “terrorist attack.”
Prosecutors said surveillance cameras showed Mr. Jovel standing at the base of the steps of one of the federal buildings, outside the employee entrance, at around 8:20 a.m. Monday. The cameras showed him ranting at security guards and holding a bag of Nescafe jars that had been rigged with rags and hand sanitizer as homemade incendiary devices, according to documents filed in support of the federal complaint. As the doors to the employee entrance slid open, the complaint said, Mr. Jovel tossed a jar inside, where it shattered, and then threw another toward the public entrance nearby.
At least one of the devices appeared to be lit, but neither exploded and no one was injured, authorities said.
After officers from the Department of Homeland Security detained him, Mr. Jovel told them that “this is a terrorist attack anyways,” and that he “wanted to ‘get’ the people who ‘challenged’ him and ‘separated families’,” according to an affidavit filed in support of the complaint by an F.B.I. agent.
“There can be zero tolerance for any targeting of law enforcement officials — let alone violent acts,” Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement. “We’re lucky that the devices allegedly thrown by the subject did not physically injure anyone.”
The federal complex in downtown Los Angeles, which includes offices, a courthouse and a nearby detention center, has been a target for protests against the Trump administration and its recent immigration crackdown. In June, demonstrations outside the building persisted for several days and nights after federal authorities in the city, which has a large immigrant population, intensified immigration raids.
After President Trump commandeered thousands of military troops and dispatched them to Los Angeles over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s objections, National Guard troops and U.S. Marines were posted outside the complex, standing guard as passers-by jeered and vandals scrawled graffiti denouncing I.C.E.
Mr. Jovel is expected to make his initial appearance on Wednesday in United States District Court in Los Angeles. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison, federal officials said.
In the complaint, federal officials said that Mr. Jovel had told them he was also upset with his landlord, and had set his Koreatown apartment on fire before heading downtown.
Los Angeles Fire Department records indicate that crews responded to reports of smoke at a building at an address matching that of Mr. Jovel’s at 4:02 a.m. Monday. Some 42 firefighters extinguished the fire in 11 minutes and no one was injured, local fire officials reported.
A Facebook page under Mr. Jovel’s name on Tuesday showed photos of a bare-chested man in a reflective vest posing last month outside an apartment whose address matched that where crews responded to Monday’s fire. The site also included numerous posts of the same man cursing loudly and incoherently in Spanish and holding up T-shirts with anti-Trump and anti-M.A.G.A. slogans as he performed pull-ups on street crossing signals and flexed his biceps on Los Angeles streets during the past year.
On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles said she was “deeply alarmed” by the attack and expressed gratitude that no one was injured. “This type of behavior is absolutely unconscionable,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security, citing the recent fatal ambush shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, and said the incident exemplified the heightened threat that federal agents face.
“This was a clear and deliberate attack on federal law enforcement, and it is emblematic of the constant attacks these brave men and women endure day in and day out as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, and gang members,” Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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