DHS Says Armed Venezuelan Man Arrested Near the White House Reported Voices Telling Him to Kill Trump
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 34 minutes ago, November 7, 2026
Secret Service officers found 3 guns and dozens of rounds of ammunition in a pickup near the White House after an officer checked on a man sleeping inside. DHS says the man reported hearing voices telling him to go to Washington and kill President Trump. That alleged statement doesn’t appear in the publicly described criminal-complaint affidavit, and the charges filed so far concern guns and a stolen vehicle.
Ronny Yordrix Guanipa Chrinos, 26, of Venezuela, was found at 11:42 p.m. on November 5 in the 1600 block of Constitution Avenue NW, near the Ellipse. He was outside the White House grounds and hadn’t approached the fence.
The officer asked whether he was okay and whether he had any weapons. According to the affidavit, Guanipa Chrinos indicated that he did, making a finger-gun gesture. He got out of the blue Ford F-150 and used Google Translate to communicate.
The affidavit describes him offering to surrender weapons to the government and saying people had tried to kill him. He told officers: “I have the gun because they tried to kill me with it, and I had to take it away from them; it’s in the brown bag.”
Officers recovered an AR-15-style rifle, a MAC-10 and a Glock 43X pistol. The truck had been reported stolen. Guanipa Chrinos told investigators his boss had lent it to him, that he’d been living in it and that he’d bought the guns about a month earlier.
DHS’s November 6 statement supplied the account about voices directing him to kill Trump. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin repeated that account.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran said the situation “posed an imminent threat” to people the agency protects and expressed concern about an increase in threat cases. No shots were fired, and no one was hurt.
Among the listed charges are theft, receiving stolen property and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, along with carrying a rifle outside a home or business, possession of certain dangerous weapons and carrying a pistol without a license. The list also includes 3 counts each of unlawful firearm transportation, unregistered firearms and unregistered ammunition. He hasn’t been charged with threatening the president or attempting an assassination, and he hasn’t been convicted.
After entering through Texas in March 2024, Guanipa Chrinos was arrested by Border Patrol and then released under the Biden administration, DHS says. The department describes him as being in the country illegally. ICE has lodged a detainer, and he’s in U.S. Marshals Service custody.
Court records described in the reporting show he appeared in D.C. Superior Court on November 6 and was held without bond. With prosecutors still reviewing the evidence, he was expected to appear in federal court on November 9, a federal law enforcement source said.
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