A twice-deported Honduran illegal immigrant is accused of trying to force his way into the cockpit of a United Airlines flight from Newark to New Orleans on Monday night after telling the crew he had a bomb in his backpack — a midair scare that ended with the pilots issuing a hijack alert and sheriff’s deputies waiting at the gate when the plane landed safely.
United Flight 2174, a Boeing 737 MAX 9 carrying 46 passengers and six crew, left Newark Liberty International Airport at 9:26 p.m. and touched down at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport at 11:07 p.m. According to Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto, the passenger — identified as Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto, 34, a Honduran national living in the Bronx — began acting irrationally during the flight, changed into all-black clothing, told flight attendants he had a bomb aboard and attempted to approach and enter the cockpit. The pilots issued a Level 4 alert, the hijack code. No explosive device was found. United said the flight “landed safely following a disruptive incident involving a passenger onboard” and referred further questions to local authorities.
Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested Gomez-Alberto as the plane arrived. He was booked on charges of communicating false information about planned arson and terrorizing, and is being held without bond at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center. Those charges are allegations and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty; making a bomb threat on an aircraft is also a federal crime punishable by up to ten years in prison, and the Federal Aviation Administration says it will investigate the incident.
The Department of Homeland Security says the flight was only the latest chapter in a long record. Border Patrol first apprehended Gomez-Alberto after he entered the country illegally near El Indio, Texas, in September 2011, and he was deported. Agents arrested him again near Columbus, New Mexico, in October 2014 after another illegal crossing, and he was removed a second time. He was arrested a third time in 2019 near the San Ysidro crossing in California — but this time ICE released him from custody in January 2020 after an immigration judge ordered his release pending removal proceedings. DHS says his prior criminal history includes felony bomb threat, felony terroristic threat and disorderly conduct offenses.
On Tuesday, ICE lodged an immigration detainer against him. “On November 10, 2026, ICE lodged a detainer for Rony Alexander Gomez-Alberto, a criminal illegal alien from Honduras, with Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office after he attempted to gain entry to the cockpit during a flight,” a DHS spokesperson said.
For the 46 passengers who sat through a hijack alert at 30,000 feet — and for every American who boards a plane — the case is now a plain test of the promise that criminal illegal immigrants will be detained and removed rather than released: a man deported twice, arrested a third time and freed by a judge’s order was able to walk onto a commercial flight and, prosecutors allege, threaten everyone on it.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram