CBP Officer Charged with Assault in Colorado Protest

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer has been charged with third-degree assault and criminal mischief after allegedly placing a protester in a chokehold during an October demonstration outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Durango, Colorado.

Nicholas Rice faces the misdemeanor charges stemming from an October 28 incident captured on multiple bystander videos, which show a masked agent grabbing and dragging Franci Stagi across the street. The protest was held in response to the detention earlier that day of three Colombian asylum seekers, a man and two children, as they traveled to school. Stagi, a retired hypnotherapist whose legal name is Anne Francesca Stagi, said she was filming Rice as he moved camping gear near the facility's entrance when he struck her hand, causing her to drop her cellphone. She reached for his shoulder to regain his attention, after which he allegedly grabbed her by the hair, restrained her neck in his arm, carried her across the street and threw her down an embankment.

Stagi told reporters she continues to experience arm pain that affects daily tasks, such as putting on a jacket. Court documents state that Rice caused her...