A Federal jury, after 2 hours of deliberations, convicted on May 2, 2023 a Haitian national, Jubenson Dominique, in a court in San Antonio for two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees and inflicting bodily injury and one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees involving physical contact.

Dominique's defenders Me Angela Saad Lindsey and Me Marina Thais Douenat, tried to convince the jury that someone else may have bitten the ICE agents during the confusing incident on the plane... For his part Dominique denied having bitten the officers...

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were loading 112 Haitian nationals onto a contract aircraft in San Antonio bound for Port Au Prince, Haiti in September 2021, when a disturbance involving several individuals occurred in the middle section of the aircraft. Jubenson Domenique was identified as the main instigator of the disturbance and a decision was made for three officers to remove him from the aircraft.

During Domenique’s extraction from the aircraft, he bit the officers, breaking the skin and leaving teeth marks on all three. Emergency Medical Services responded, and one officer was treated at a local hospital, provided prescriptions for medication and began treatment and testing for possible infections, including six months of HIV treatment.

U.S. Attorney Jaime Esparza of the Western District of Texas and Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Huerta of the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility announced that Dominique faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count of inflicting bodily injury and eight years in prison for the third count.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez will hand down Dominique's sentence on August 30.

SL/ HaitiLibre