On a frigid North Country day in December 2025, Marvin Aguilar-Garcia agreed to meet his probation officer for a sudden, unscheduled visit.It was a setup. A Lewis County sheriff’s deputy pulled over Aguilar’s car. Two men in plain clothes approached Aguilar on the passenger’s side. One of the men shouted something, Aguilar remembered.Aguilar, an undocumented dairy farm worker from Guatemala, had an idea of what was happening.He ran for it. Aguilar slipped and fell in foot-deep snow in a swamp. An officer giving chase fell face-first into rocks and got up cursing, Aguilar remembers.Aguilar was wearing Crocs, so soon his feet were freezing. He stopped running and ended up with frostbite. Border Patrol agents eventually took him into custody, but the lawmen suffered, too: A sheriff’s deputy who slipped broke a collarbone. An immigration agent had a scrape near his eye.Thus began Aguilar’s central role in a drama that was both peculiar and emblematic of thousands happening on video and in private around America since President Donald Trump started a second term.Along the way, Aguilar ended up charged by the federal government with felony assault. He faced a 20-year prison sentence.His alleged weapon? An automobile owner’s manual.Syracuse.com reviewed hundreds of pages of documents to piece together this unusual case. Reporters interviewed Aguilar in a federal detention center and his family hiding in the North Country.It’s the story of an immigrant who was charged with assaulting an officer with a book that couldn’t be found, who was discovered even though he wasn’t hiding, and who escaped prosecution but was never freed.Aguilar’s case reveals federal agents’ practices, which have been questioned by civil rights authorities and immigration advocates around the country. Most of the more than one million people rounded up by the federal government in the last year have gone into the secret world of immigration courts, where closed proceedings with often inadequate lawyers provide little pushback on the government’s case. But Aguilar is an exception: His case went to the federal court system, which has greater transparency, independence from the government and stricter rules of due process.Gabrielle DiBella, who defended Aguilar in federal court, said a trial gave Aguilar a forum to defend himself.“I can’t even imagine what they’re doing to the people that don’t have any avenue to tell their story or are too afraid to speak out,” she said. “I think there’s much worse that we’ll just never hear about.”‘I’m going to be hurt or killed’Aguilar came to the U.S. in May 2012 from Guatemala, records show. He said he crossed the U.S. border somewhere in the desert.He was discovered without immigration papers when he got a reckless driving charge, a misdemeanor, in Virginia in 2017, records show. The immigration court released him on $8,000 bond and allowed him to pursue asylum, records show. The federal government grants asylum to immigrants from certain countries who can prove they are fleeing persecution.In 2021, Aguilar was arrested for drunk driving and aggravated assault after a crash in Watertown that injured three other people. He was sentenced in 2023 to six months in prison and five years’ probation.Aguilar had his asylum hearing in 2022. He told an immigration judge about the violence he experienced in Guatemala. He said gangs poisoned his father and cut his cousin’s leg.Aguilar said he had a choice: Join the gang or be killed.“If I am returned, then I know for a fact that I’m going to be hurt or killed,” he told the judge.The immigration court judge ordered Aguilar removed from the U.S. The judge said Aguilar had not been specific enough about the threats and he had not been hurt.Aguilar filed an appeal in 2023. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security never responded. The case remained on appeal when agents arrested him in December.Myrna Romero, his girlfriend, said that in the meantime, Aguilar cooperated with his Lewis County probation officer, Matt Morrow.“He always complied. He made jokes with them. They sort of laughed together,” she said. Aguilar, who lived on a dairy farm in Castorland, went to meet the officer on the morning of Dec. 15. Before he left, he told Romero he wanted to watch a movie together that night with their two sons Kirian, 5, and Jadiel, 3, who are American citizens.“Then it was 9 p.m., and we heard nothing,” she said. “Then I called his sister and she said, ‘I think my brother got caught by immigration because he’s not answering. He’s nowhere to be seen.’ ”Romero said the probation officer abused his role.“It was more like treason,” she said. “They were just waiting for him.”Lewis County Sheriff Michael Carpinelli's deputies helped Border Patrol agents set up a sting operation to arrest Marvin Aguilar-Garcia in December. Mike Groll | The Associated PressPlanning and cooperationFederal authorities would not answer syracuse.com’s questions. But court records show how they planned Aguilar’s arrest.Border Patrol agents did not have a warrant to enter Aguilar’s home or the farm, so they had to encounter him in public to arrest him, his attorney said. They spent 12 days setting up the phony probation appointment and planning the traffic stop, records show. Trevor Baize, who works in intelligence for the Border Patrol, sent an email to Morrow, the probation director, court records show. Morrow invited two sheriff’s deputies to help.This is Trump country. The president carried 70% of the vote in the county in 2024. Mike Carpinelli, the Lewis County sheriff, has publicly aligned himself with conservative causes, describing himself as “President Trump’s favorite sheriff in New York state.” He has ties to right-wing groups including the constitutional sheriff’s movement, which believes that elected sheriffs are superior to state and federal officials.For the bust, Morrow proposed he sit in an unmarked vehicle near Aguilar’s residence “to get eyes on Marvin and the vehicle leaving the farm,” he wrote.Baize said he would send a team to the fire garage at 7 a.m. to plan the operation. They shared a photo of the farm and circled the apartment where Aguilar lived.On Monday morning, they waited for Aguilar’s friend, a U.S. citizen who drives people to appointments, to pull out of the farm. The sheriff’s deputy turned on his flashing lights and alerted Border Patrol officers to join them.Even though the operation was planned well in advance, Deputy Keith Bush told the driver he pulled him over because he had snow on his license plate, court records show. The area had received nearly a foot of snow over the previous two days.Then Aguilar ran about a quarter of a mile in knee-high snow before his feet froze and he waited for agents to arrest him.Bush fell and broke his collarbone. The sheriff’s office never issued a ticket, the driver said.Federal prosecutors intended to use photos of Border Patrol Agent Trevor Baize in an assault case against Marvin Aguilar-Garcia. They took the first picture after the incident to show him wearing a badge. There is no badge visible in the picture taken the day of the arrest. U.S. District CourtLater, Agent Jordan Bastedo said he noticed a mark near Agent Baize’s left eye. He took a picture of a bruise he said was not there when the operation began, he wrote in his witness statement.Baize said he thought Aguilar threw a wallet at him. They drove back to the scene to look for a wallet. When they didn’t find one, they decided Aguilar must have thrown the vehicle owner’s manual. But they couldn’t find that either.“I could not locate a wallet or any other item that may have been thrown by Aguilar-Garcia,” Bastedo wrote. Still, another Border Patrol agent, who was not at the scene, filed a complaint in federal court that said Aguilar threw what appeared to be a vehicle owner’s manual at Baize.U.S. attorneys convinced the federal grand jurors to indict Aguilar on a charge of assaulting a federal officer.Aguilar had milked cows, started a family and attended his probation appointments in plain view of immigration agents who had not touched his pending asylum case in almost three years.Now, he faced 20 years in prison and deportation to Guatemala without saying goodbye to his girlfriend or his sons.Because of the assault charge, Aguilar’s case was sent to criminal court instead of immigration court. He told DiBella, his public defender, that he wanted to fight the charge.“I hadn’t done anything,” he told Syracuse.com. “I told her that the officer fell face-first in the snow. He slipped and fell, and maybe that’s how he got injured.”DiBella was ready for a fight.“How disgusting to go out and hunt someone down like that,” she said.Assistant federal public defenders Gabrielle DiBella (left) and Courtenay McKeon stand outside the James M. Hanley Federal Building in downtown Syracuse in 2025. Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.comGovernment setbacks in courtSince January 2025, the federal public defenders in Syracuse have handled dozens of immigration cases brought by the Trump administration. In most cases, the defendants plead guilty and move on to the administrative immigration system, which handles orders of removal.Only a few defendants have taken their cases to trial in the U.S. Northern District of New York.Each time, the government has been forced to lower or drop the charges after defense attorneys challenged warrants, tactics and evidence.Last year, DiBella successfully defended Doris Aleman-Bonilla, a Honduran woman arrested after a traffic stop in Fulton. DiBella and partner Courtenay McKeon raised so many questions that two separate juries did not buy the government’s account.Aguilar’s assault case was assigned to Judge Anthony Brindisi, a former Democratic congressman.DiBella started to attack the government’s case in pre-trial motions. First, she challenged the government’s pursuit of Aguilar for an immigration violation.The government contended that Aguilar was present illegally in the United States. They pointed to an “order of removal” from an immigration judge. DiBella argued agents couldn’t act on that order while the appeal was pending. She said that appeal status was listed in the government’s own case notes.Finally, prosecutors acknowledged they had a mistaken belief that Aguilar’s case was over.No evidence of assaultNext, DiBella went after the lack of evidence.Baize — the agent with the black eye — never saw Aguilar throw anything, DiBella argued. No other law enforcement agents could testify they saw a book. If the probation officer saw a book later, as the government alleged, he did not photograph it or pick it up, she said. Yet the grand jury indictment referred to a book as the weapon.The driver of the car told Syracuse.com he pulled out the owner’s manual to get his registration and insurance card for the deputy. The book was on the car seat when he drove away, the driver said. There is no video footage of the encounter because Border Patrol agents and Lewis County sheriff’s deputies do not use body-worn cameras, DiBella said.A month after the arrest, prosecutors had new evidence to present: a photo of an owner’s manual. For demonstration purposes.DiBella asked the judge to block the government from introducing those pictures. “The photographs are simply a poor attempt to hide the fact that law enforcement failed to recover the very item they accuse Marvin of throwing, which lends credibility to the idea that the owner’s manual never even left the vehicle that day,” she wrote in court documents.At one point, prosecutors stopped using the word “book” in their pre-trial documents. Aguilar, they said, threw an “object.”A challenge to the agentsDiBella also took aim at the credibility of the Border Patrol agents.Shortly after the Border Patrol arrested Aguilar, federal agents in Minnesota shot and killed two protesters. There was no better time for her case to go to trial.DiBella asked the U.S. attorneys to hand over disciplinary records for the agents involved in Aguilar’s case. She also asked whether any of the agents had been deployed to Minnesota.In that written request, she summed up the problems she saw with this case: “Because the story continues to change, because no one witnessed the alleged assault (not even BPA Baize), because the government cannot prove conclusively that a book was thrown at BPA Baize, and because no other object was ever found, the entire trial turns on the credibility of the government’s witnesses,” she wrote.Facebook post from Border Patrol Agent Trevor Baize FacebookIn a 2021 investigation, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight revealed “violent and offensive posts” made by at least 60 Border Patrol agents in a Facebook group called “I’m 10-15” – the code for having an alien in custody.That gave DiBella an opening to request disciplinary records, she said.Baize has posted and reposted several anti-immigrant sentiments on his personal Facebook account.One says: “If the American flag offends you or you feel the need to fly a different flag, feel free to GET THE FUCK out of this country.”Another post about the Boston Marathon bombers said, “Maybe we should worry about the thousands of homeless veterans before a single refugee takes aid from America.” The original meme was posted by Trump.A Border Patrol spokesman did not respond to syracuse.com’s questions about Baize’s disciplinary record or his Facebook posts.A bombshell from prosecutorsA trial neared. Aguilar’s lawyer had already shown her strategy. She would challenge everything: the stop, the missing book, his immigration status, the agents’ history, the lack of witnesses. The judge had not yet decided most of the motions, but DiBella’s targets were clear.Then, on Feb. 12 — five days before a jury would be selected — prosecutors dropped a bombshell.They asked the judge to dismiss the case. The judge said yes.The reason? On a form signed by the judge and prosecutors, a checked box says: “Other: in the interest of justice.”Mysteriously, the U.S. attorney’s office filed a separate letter with the court and asked the judge to seal it from the public.Nothing in the record explains why the government dropped the charges. The U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.Aguilar was released from the Oswego County jail, but he didn’t go free. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents immediately took him into custody and put him in the federal immigration system with a goal of deporting him.‘Disappear someone’The methods used by federal agents to arrest Aguilar ring familiar to advocates watching similar cases play out across the state and country.About the same time Aguilar’s case was building, public defenders in Los Angeles went on a 23-case win streak against U.S. attorneys whose cases fell apart in the courthouse. Famously, in Washington, D.C., a man was acquitted of assault for throwing a sandwich at an agent.The Aguilar case fits the strategy Trump’s immigrati