Dominican Criminal Shot CBP Officer in the Face After Multiple Arrests and Zero Consequences

Judge Loretta Preska looked across her courtroom at a 22-year-old illegal immigrant who’d shot a federal officer in the face and handed him the maximum sentence she could. Fifteen years. Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez got everything the law allowed, and honestly, it still doesn’t feel like enough when you consider what he took from Officer Joshua Sinclair and what this case reveals about our broken system.

“There is an overwhelming need to send a message to people who come to the U.S. to commit crimes,” Judge Preska said. She’s right, but here’s the thing that should make every American’s blood boil. This message should never have been necessary because Mora Nunez shouldn’t have been here at all.

Let’s walk through the timeline because the details matter. Mora Nunez crossed into Arizona illegally in 2023. The Biden administration caught him and then released him into the country anyway. He got a deportation order in 2024. Think about that for a second. The system identified him as someone who needed to leave, issued the paperwork, and then what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened.

You know what did happen? A crime spree across New York City. Four arrests. Each time they let him walk without bail despite that deportation order sitting in the system like a bad check nobody wanted to cash. He allegedly assaulted a pregnant woman in August 2024. Days later, authorities arrested him again for threatening another migrant with a machete. November brought another arrest for violating a protection order. January saw yet another warrant.

The pattern screams at you from the page. This wasn’t some kid making one mistake. This was a predator testing the limits of a system that kept proving it had none.

Then came July 19, 2025. Officer Joshua Sinclair was off duty, sitting with a woman on a rock near the Hudson River in Fort Washington Park. Just after midnight, Mora Nunez and his accomplice Christhian Aybar-Berroa rolled up on a moped. Mora Nunez shot Sinclair in the face and right arm. The officer, even wounded and ambushed, returned fire and hit his attacker twice. That’s the difference between the good guys and the criminals, right there in one moment of chaos and courage.

Sinclair survived because cops responding to a nearby robbery (likely committed by the same suspects minutes earlier) got there fast enough to save his life. The pregnant woman Mora Nunez had allegedly assaulted wasn’t so lucky in terms of justice timing. Neither were the other victims along the way.

Here’s where it gets even worse. Mora Nunez was already wanted on kidnapping and weapons charges out of Massachusetts related to a pawn shop robbery. The jurisdictions weren’t even talking to each other properly, or if they were, nobody seemed to care enough to actually hold him.

President Trump called it out immediately. “The Democrats have flooded our Nation with Criminal Invaders,” he wrote on Truth Social. Strong language? Sure. But when you’ve got a federal officer shot in the face by someone who’d been arrested four times and had a deportation order, maybe strong language is exactly what the situation demands.

Aybar-Berroa, the accomplice who later tried destroying his bloodied clothes, got 12 years and seven months. Both men will serve their time, but the larger questions hang in the air like smoke. How many other Miguel Nunezs are walking around right now with deportation orders nobody’s enforcing? How many local jurisdictions are releasing criminals because of sanctuary policies or bail reform that treats violent offenders like parking violators?

CBP Director of Field Operations Francis Russo said the sentence brings them “another step closer to full justice.” Officer Sinclair continues his recovery, facing down whatever physical and psychological challenges come with getting shot in the face while you’re trying to enjoy an evening with someone you care about.

Mora Nunez cried during his sentencing. He tried apologizing. Too late. Way too late. Judge Preska understood that actions have consequences, which apparently makes her a revolutionary in today’s justice system. She gave him the max and explained why the world needed to see it.

The tragedy is that this entire situation was preventable. Every single piece of it. We had the deportation order. We had the arrests. We had multiple chances to remove a dangerous criminal from our streets. Instead, we got a wounded federal officer, traumatized victims, and another data point in the argument over border security and criminal justice reform.

Mora Nunez still faces 25 to life in a separate murder case pending in Manhattan. The system finally woke up, but only after the damage was done. That’s not justice. That’s a failure with a belated correction. And somewhere tonight, another officer is putting on a badge wondering if the system will have their back when it matters, or if they’ll be the next Joshua Sinclair, relying on their own training and luck to survive what policy failures enabled.

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