A 22-year-old Columbus man has pleaded guilty to threatening to shoot U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a series of social media posts, admitting to federal agents that he was behind the account after months of digital tracing led investigators to his door. Justin Mesael Novoa posted online in June 2025 that agents should blast every ICE agent they find, and later wrote that he could not wait to shoot ICE agents and “MAGA maggots,” according to prosecutors.
Novoa entered his guilty plea in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, as first reported by NBC4 WCMH-TV. U.S. District Judge Douglas R. Cole presided over the hearing, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy D. Prichard prosecuting the case on behalf of the federal government, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio. Homeland Security Investigations agents were first alerted in December 2025 to alleged threats made against ICE employees on X.
Investigators traced the account, @Father2High, back to Novoa by linking the registered email address, phone number, and IP log data directly to his Columbus address before ever knocking on his door, according to BNO News. When agents executed a search warrant at his residence, Novoa reportedly told them, “All right, you got me. That was me,” and later added, “D—, so Elon does give you access to that,” referencing the digital trail that had led investigators straight to him.
Guns, Body Armor and Extremist Rhetoric Found Inside the Home
During that December 2025 search, agents seized multiple firearms from Novoa's residence, including one handgun, two shotguns and two rifles, along with ammunition, according to prosecutors. They also discovered a body armor vest and two military-style helmets inside the home. Federal court filings, cited by the U.S. Attorney's Office, revealed Novoa also operated under the screen name Lord of Frenzied Flame, and that his X account contained additional violent and antisemitic posts referencing gas chambers and Adolf Hitler.
Photos taken during the search, reviewed by WHMI, showed a pro-Palestinian flag hanging on Novoa's bedroom wall alongside the seized weapons and gear. Novoa was arrested in January 2026 and, per a report from SubX News, waived his federal detention hearing and was ordered held at the Franklin County Jail pending trial. A federal grand jury indicted him the following month on two charges: making threatening interstate communications and threatening to assault or murder a federal law enforcement officer.
What Novoa Faces at Sentencing
Novoa now faces up to five years in prison for the interstate communications charge and up to 10 years for threatening to assault or murder a federal officer. Under 18 U.S.C. § 115, threatening to assault, kidnap, or murder a federal law enforcement officer to impede or retaliate against official duties carries that same 10-year statutory maximum, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He is scheduled to be sentenced later, with Judge Cole ultimately determining the term within advisory federal guidelines.
Part of a Wider Federal Crackdown
Novoa's case is one of several recent federal prosecutions in the Southern District of Ohio targeting threats or violence against immigration officers, including a separate 2026 indictment of a Venezuelan national accused of assaulting an immigration officer during an arrest in Powell, Ohio, according to the Scioto Valley Guardian. The cases arrive amid a documented national spike in hostility toward immigration personnel: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported a 1,347% surge in assaults against ICE officers and an 8,000% increase in death threats against immigration personnel between January 2025 and January 2026.
Federal prosecutors elsewhere in the country have brought similar charges against people accused of threatening ICE agents online this year, including a 41-year-old Michigan man in July and a 33-year-old Wisconsin man in February who allegedly threatened on Facebook to snipe agents. In March, a federal judge sentenced a Charlotte, North Carolina man to 15 months in prison after he phoned in death threats against ICE agents, offering one benchmark for how federal courts have handled comparable convictions.
