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Twice-deported Honduran man accused of threatening bomb on United flight
A Honduran national with two prior removals from the United States is accused of claiming a bomb and trying to enter the cockpit of a United Airlines flight from Newark to New Orleans, which landed safely.
A Honduran national who has been removed from the United States twice is accused of claiming to have a bomb and attempting to enter the cockpit of a United Airlines flight from Newark to New Orleans, the Department of Homeland Security said. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 carried 46 passengers and six crew members and landed safely after a midair disturbance on Monday night.
According to the reporting, the pilots issued a hijacking alert after the passenger allegedly made the bomb claim and tried to get into the cockpit. The suspect, identified as Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto, was taken into custody after the plane reached the ground. The details of the bomb claim and the cockpit attempt rest on initial reports and the account provided by DHS, and have not been independently confirmed.
The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office arrested Gomez-Alberto and booked him for providing false information about a planned arson and for terrorizing. DHS also lists bomb-threat, terroristic-threat and disorderly-conduct offenses in its account of the case. The sheriff's office did not respond to requests for comment, and confirmation of the charges is still pending.
DHS described Gomez-Alberto as a criminal illegal alien and said he had been removed from the United States twice before. Records cited by the department show Border Patrol arrests in Texas in 2011, New Mexico in 2014 and California in 2019. In January 2020, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released him pending removal proceedings. The reasons for that release decision have not been fully explained in the material available, and the sources do not say how long he remained in the country after that release.
The chronology of the arrests is worth noting for what it shows about the case history. Each of the three Border Patrol encounters took place in a different state, spanning a period of roughly eight years. The sources do not indicate whether any of those encounters resulted in criminal prosecution, and the material available does not describe the outcome of the removal proceedings that followed his 2020 release.
ICE lodged a detainer against Gomez-Alberto on November 10, meaning the agency has asked local authorities to hold him so it can take custody. DHS tied the case to the administration's immigration policy, arguing that the incident illustrates the consequences of people who have been repeatedly removed returning to the country. The department's statement framed the flight incident as a direct result of those policy choices, though the sources do not include any independent assessment of that claim.
United said in a statement that a passenger caused a disruptive incident on the flight and referred all questions to local authorities. The airline did not provide further details about the events aboard the aircraft, and did not address the bomb claim or the cockpit attempt directly. Whether the case proceeds on the charges listed by the sheriff's office, and what the full circumstances of the cockpit attempt were, remain open questions.
Source: foxnews.com
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