Robert Jacob Hoopes, 25, was sentenced Thursday to 30 months in federal prison for hurling a rock at an ICE officer's head outside Portland's federal immigration building, one of the first significant convictions to emerge from the wave of anti-ICE protests that struck the city in 2025.
Robert Jacob Hoopes threw a rock. It struck a federal officer above the eye and split the skin. Thursday, U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson in Portland decided that was a federal felony worth 30 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and more than $8,000 in restitution.
The attack came on June 14, 2025, outside the Portland U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility during a protest demonstrators called the "No Kings" rally. According to court filings and federal prosecutors, Hoopes threw a rock that caused a significant laceration above the officer's eye. Later the same day, surveillance footage showed Hoopes and two others ripping a stop sign from the ground and using it as a battering ram against the building's front entrance, causing more than $8,000 in property damage, the Department of Justice said.
A federal grand jury indicted Hoopes on August 5, 2025, on charges of aggravated assault on a federal employee with a dangerous weapon and depredation of federal property. He pleaded guilty to the assault count on February 18, 2026.
The conviction reflects a deliberate shift in how the Justice Department treats attacks on federal immigration officers. Under the Biden administration, 31 of 90 federal protest cases from Portland's 2020 riots were dismissed, including at least four in which defendants had been charged with assaulting federal officers, according to a KGW Portland investigation into the dismissals. More than half of those 31 dropped cases were dismissed with prejudice, permanently closing them. The unraveling began after the Trump-era U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon resigned on February 28, 2021, and Biden-era DOJ leadership moved to clear the docket.
The practical effect was years of uncertain accountability at Portland's ICE facility, where clashes between protesters and federal agents had become routine. The Hoopes prosecution ran on an entirely different timeline. The indictment came seven weeks after the attack. The guilty plea followed within six months. Thursday's sentence includes no deferred term, no suspended time, no community-service resolution of the kind that cleared similar cases in Oregon state court.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has made federal officer protection a stated priority since taking office in January 2025, and the Western District of Oregon carried that directive through to sentencing.
None of which changes what unfolded on June 14. The stop-sign footage, entered as evidence, showed a deliberate, sustained effort to breach a federal building's entrance, not a single impulsive act in a chaotic crowd. Combined with the rock throw, prosecutors argued, the evidence showed someone who came to the protest intending to cause harm. Hoopes did not dispute either account at sentencing.
Portland's ICE facility has drawn repeated protests through 2025 and into this year, and federal prosecutors have other open cases from confrontations at immigration detention facilities around the country. Whether Thursday's result sets a durable standard or stands alone will depend on how aggressively the DOJ pursues those remaining cases. Hoopes himself is not waiting to find out. His 30-month sentence begins immediately.
Also read: Two Utah Court Clerks Indicted for Allegedly Routing Illegal Aliens Past ICE • DOJ sues Virginia over laws that would jail masked federal agents on duty • DOJ charges three in Ohio over wide-ranging child smuggling conspiracy
