HOUSTON—With 13 stitches in his upper lip and second-degree burns across his body, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer recounted a brutal assault he faced from an illegal immigrant pedophile he was trying to take off the streets.

The injured officer was rehired to the force in September after the Trump administration solicited the help of retired personnel after receiving an influx of cash from the One Big Beautiful Bill.

“It’s a lot different from the job I left … everybody’s running, everybody’s fighting,” he told The Daily Wire in an exclusive interview Thursday.

.@JennieSTaer interviews ICE officers who were assaulted in the line of duty:

“We were stopping a vehicle…a passenger, as he ran, threw…a 32 oz Yeti style coffee cup into my face, full of hot coffee…2nd degree burns of my face, neck, arm, chest.” pic.twitter.com/iNQaWvjpjw

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) November 7, 2025

“I would like the rhetoric to cool down a little bit, I think that’s probably fueled by some things that have been said about us,” he added.

Attacks like the one he suffered are now a disturbingly normal part of the job. ICE is facing a 1,000% increase in assaults and an 8,000% surge in death threats.

Credit: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Salvadoran illegal immigrant Walter Leonel Perez Rodriguez, 33, hurled a metal cup full of hot coffee into the officer’s face as he tried to evade arrest on Tuesday.

Rodriguez has illegally entered the U.S. at least three times before and had two previous deportation orders, according to ICE. While living in the United States, he sexually assaulted a child and committed a DWI.

Mugshot of pedophile Walter Leonel Perez Rodriguez. (Credit: ICE)

Officers were trying to pull over a separate target when Rodriguez and the others fled from a car.

“We were stopping a vehicle. We had an individual who was a visa overstay from Mexico. We traffic stopped the vehicle,” the officer, whose name is being withheld for his safety, recalled.

“We were able to box the vehicle in, but the passengers bailed out, and a passenger, as he ran, threw what I thought was about a 32-ounce Yeti-style coffee cup in my face full of hot coffee,” the officer said.

The Daily Wire also spoke with an ICE officer who was recently hit by an illegal immigrant driver hoping to run him over. The officer is still undergoing medical evaluation, but believes he has nerve damage and a bone fracture.

“Everything we’ve always trained for, now we’re actually having to put into motion. The public, they’ve never seen us do our job, so now that we are actually doing it, people are taking matters into their own hands,” he said.

A BBC TV news host may face consequences for making her “disgust” obvious when being forced to use the phrase “pregnant people” while reading from a teleprompter earlier this year.

Martine Croxall had twenty formal complaints lodged against her following a June broadcast. 

“London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has released research, which says that nearly 600 heat-related deaths are expected in the U.K.,” Croxall said during the broadcast in question.

“Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, says that the aged, pregnant people… women,” she went on after a pause, “and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions.”

“I have a new favorite BBC presenter,” J.K. Rowling wrote in June after the segment aired.

I have a new favourite BBC presenter. https://t.co/l2gkThccty

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 22, 2025

BBC News reps initially defended Croxall’s delivery, saying her reaction was because of “scripting which somewhat clumsily incorporated phrases from the press release accompanying the research.”

But now that’s changed. The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) announced Thursday that Croxall had indeed violated its prescribed editorial standards of impartiality.

“The phrase ‘pregnant people’ was followed by a facial expression which has been variously interpreted by complainants as showing disgust, ridicule, contempt or exasperation,” the news release from the ECU said.

“…The ECU considered the facial expression which accompanied the change of ‘people’ to ‘women’ laid it open to the interpretation that it indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity, and the congratulatory messages Ms. Croxall later received on social media, together with the critical views expressed in the complaints to the BBC and elsewhere, tended to confirm that the impression of her having expressed a personal view was widely shared across the spectrum of opinion on the issue,” it said.

While the statement did not detail any punishments Croxall will receive for her actions, social media has been congratulating her for taking a stand for team sanity ever since the incident occurred.

Piers Morgan said, “The BBC expects a female presenter to use the words ‘pregnant people’ about pregnant WOMEN, and then reprimands her when she rolls her eyes?! Pathetic.”

“She should have her own news channel,” one commenter suggested.

“I loved that. It was so well done. Such a small thing, but it was a powerful reality check. She deserves a raise and a promotion,” another said. “The Emperor’s New Clothes have hereby been exposed to the world.”