Mexican National Pleads Guilty to Impersonating Border Agent, Illegal Guns

A Mexican national living in the United States pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego to impersonating a Border Patrol agent and illegally possessing firearms after using a disguised vehicle to disrupt immigration enforcement operations in Southern California.

Jaime Ernesto Alvarez-Gonzalez, 53, entered the plea on Tuesday to one count of false impersonation of a federal officer and three counts of unlawful possession of firearms, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of California. Prosecutors said he had overstayed a tourist visa he used to enter the country decades earlier.

Court documents detail how Alvarez-Gonzalez drove a black Ford F-150 truck modified to resemble an undercover Border Patrol vehicle. The truck featured a Border Patrol sticker on the windshield, nonfunctional radio antennae on the roof, handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror and a license plate frame reading "federal truck," with "federal" misspelled. On January 8, he followed a Border Patrol agent through the Linda Vista neighborhood in San Diego while both drove similar black F-150s.

The agent aborted the immigration enforcement mission upon spotting the tailing...