A Minnesota judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton offered no prison time to an anti-deportation activist who was convicted of repeatedly assaulting federal officers, including by later punching an arresting agent in the head, during an uprising against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Clinton-nominated Judge John Tunheim let 28-year-old Isabel Lopez go free at her sentencing hearing on Tuesday, ordering that she only has to pay a small $25 fine as penalty for the federal assault charge she pleaded guilty to.“You have suffered the sentence already in many respects,” Tunheim told Lopez. “This is over once you pay the $25.”
Her defense attorneys had argued in a sentencing plea, requesting at most a probationary period of three months, that Lopez has been “highly traumatized by being arrested, jailed for a couple of days, and having to endure a felony prosecution for a year.” Tunheim on Tuesday granted Lopez’s request that he respect the non-incarceration plea deal she struck and allowed her to avoid probation altogether.Lopez, who has been out of jail on supervised release since June 2025, was charged with three felony counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers over a violent Minneapolis riot she participated in last year, plus one felony count of obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder. However, ahead of sentencing, she pleaded down to a single Class A misdemeanor of the assault charge.
