NC man to serve time for ICE death threats phoned in to CMPD, impersonating Marine
A North Carolina man was sentenced in federal court Tuesday for threatening to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Charlotte last year while falsely claiming to be a former U.S. Marine.
In a recorded call to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department sergeant, Johnathan Trent Thomas said he was planning to shoot the masked and unidentified agents arresting people on Albemarle Road in May.
During the call, he referenced the April 29, 2024, shootout that killed two U.S. marshals and two police officers in east Charlotte, saying he “could do a whole lot better” to more officers if they tried to arrest him for the threats.
“Some of those words are some of the most offensive things you could say in this courthouse,” U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell said at Thomas’ sentencing.
Those marshals had names, Bell, said, and one of them was Tommy Weeks — whose office was inside the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina and whose memorial now sits outside the federal building in uptown Charlotte.
Bell sentenced Thomas to 15 months in prison, which was one month less than the maximum guideline range. During Thomas’ two years of supervised release, Bell ruled, officers will be able to search his home for weapons at any time — without a warrant or probable cause.
“We need eyes on you for a couple years,” Bell said.
Thomas did not object.
“I’ve obviously shown I shouldn’t have access to that,” he told Bell after saying he regretted his threats.
Threats played in court
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kelly played Thomas’ May 14 phone call to the CMPD sergeant working the Hickory Grove division in court. In it, Thomas references ICE arrests near Charlotte East Language Academy off Albemarle Road.
ICE agents on May 12 arrested a father who was headed to the magnet school for a dropoff, parents have said. Another man was arrested walking in a nearby neighborhood the same day.
At the start of the four-minute call, Thomas said he would be “patrolling the streets for the rest of the month” after he heard about ICE agents “snatching people up on Albemarle Road” in east Charlotte. If he saw agents do it again, he would “Swiss cheese” them — or put holes in them — “the exact way I did the Taliban on both of my deployments.”
Thomas did not serve in the military, prosecutors said.
But during the phone call, he said he was a U.S. Marine who always wore his uniform clearly.
“For somebody to take their uniform off and go snatch people up because of political reasons? No. I am willing to die over that,” he said. “I am going to martyr myself over this.”
Thomas then said he had flower pots full of explosives and would kill anyone who tried to serve a warrant based on the phone call. He also said he had green-tip, long range and military grade bullets.
“You remember those marshals got Swiss-cheesed, and those two other officers? I promise you I can do a whole lot better than that,” he said.
Officers later found that Thomas was not patrolling Albemarle, and he didn’t have military-grade ammunition nor flower pots of explosives.
He did have three rifles and a 10 mm handgun.
Judge addressed ‘overheated’ political rhetoric
Thomas’ federal public defender, John Parke Davis, argued that Thomas had no intent to follow through on the threats. Thomas has autism spectrum disorder and ADHD, and he has struggled with emotional regulation and social interactions for most of his life, Davis said.
The week the mother of his child moved out of his home, he “channeled his distress maladaptively” into the threatening call.
Davis said Thomas’ “strong feelings about how law enforcement officers should act” were intensified by “heated rhetoric across the political spectrum.”
Prosecutors and Bell agreed that there was not enough evidence to know whether Thomas would’ve shot agents or officers.
“We are overheated right now in this community,” Bell said before sentencing Thomas. “If this sentence is light, I don’t think that’s going to bring down the temperature.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2026 at 3:00 PM.
