San Francisco Judge to Weigh the Fate of Trial in ICE Officer Assault Case
A San Francisco judge will soon decide whether or not to proceed with the criminal trial of a man charged with assaulting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
Caleb Alexander Ranney was arrested on Aug. 8, 2025, at 630 Sansome St., the city’s ICE field office and detention facility, after an hourslong standoff between protesters and ICE agents.
Roughly 10 protesters were outside when two vans left the building at 3:18 p.m., escorted by about a dozen uniformed officers who pointed pepper ball rifles and batons at the crowd, according to Mission Local, which obtained a video detailing the incident.
The outlet reported that ICE officers tackled and detained two protesters outside the building at around 3:25 p.m.
Protesters at the scene later told Mission Local that approximately three minutes after detaining the protesters, officers fired pepper balls under the garage door.
Prosecutors charged Ranney in December with two misdemeanors: assaulting a federal officer and destroying government property. They submitted the charges by information — a document that the U.S. Attorney’s Office files directly, without having to go through a grand jury.
The document alleges that Ranney “forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered with” an ICE deportation officer it identifies only as “Victim One,” and that he damaged a secure vehicle entrance on the Jackson Street side of the building.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday.
Ranney’s defense has asked the U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Hixson, who will preside over the trial, to consider the actions by a different officer at the scene: Federal Protective Service Inspector Stephen Glumaz. The public defenders alleged that Glumaz fired pepper ball rounds into the crowd shortly before the alleged assault.
The latest motion from Ranney’s defense marks the third allegation that the government mishandled evidence in the case. Hixson has already ruled that agents unconstitutionally searched Ranney’s backpack, and separately sanctioned the government for losing or destroying items taken from it, though he declined to dismiss the case on those grounds.
The defense now argues that those episodes amount to “a pattern of misconduct by government agents with regard to the search in this case, spoliation of evidence, and lying about it.”
In June, prosecutors left Glumaz off their witness list, and the defense subpoenaed him on July 9 to testify at trial.
According to the motion, Glumaz’s supervisor emailed him on March 25 to inform him that he had been decertified “as a PepperBall and FN303 operator” and could not possess or operate either weapon until further notice. The last line of that email, defense attorneys wrote, said the decertification was “in connection with the use of force incidents” on Aug. 8 and Aug. 20, 2025.
The motion said that prosecutors did not turn that email over until the evening of July 22 — nearly four months after it was sent — and five days before trial.
Whether Glumaz has since regained his certification is not clear from the filings.
“Not only was this the first time that the defense was made aware that Inspector Glumaz’s decertification from use of the pepper ball gun was caused by his actions on the date of the charged incident,” the motion stated, “this was also the first time the defense was made aware that Inspector Glumaz (or any other involved agent who was part of the same team) was involved in the subsequent protest on August 20, 2025.”
In an earlier filing, the defense pointed to surveillance footage, saying that it shows “a federal officer firing multiple pepper balls at unarmed protesters less than a minute before Mr. Ranney allegedly assaulted an ICE officer.” The defense said it may argue that Ranney acted in self-defense.
Under the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors must turn over evidence favorable to the defense regardless of whether or not it is requested.
The withheld material supports a claim that officers used excessive force, Assistant Public Defenders Angela Chuang and Samantha Jaffe said, and can help determine whether they were lawfully carrying out their duties when the alleged assault occurred.
None of the named officers have responded publicly, and prosecutors have not yet filed their response to the motion. Under the schedule Hixson set for July 30, the government’s response is due by end of day Friday. The judge is scheduled to take up the motion at 9 a.m. Monday — the hour the trial is set to begin.
Prosecutors objected at Thursday’s hearing to the defense’s follow-up discovery demands — such as personnel files, use-of-force reports, agent text messages, and records from other San Francisco protests involving the same agents. The defense’s motion said prosecutors called their demands overly broad or unworkable.
If Hixson does decline to dismiss the case, the defense said, they are asking him to instruct jurors that the government violated its disclosure obligations. That instruction would allow jurors to weigh the violation when they deliberate.
Ranney is not in custody and has been under pretrial supervision since December — when his first court appearance took place. According to the motion, Hixson warned prosecutors that failing to meet their disclosure obligations could result in dismissal.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.