DACA-Lapsed Guyanese Immigrant Charged with Seven Firebombing Attacks on New York Churches and Businesses

What Happened

Yogesh Sayrange, a 36-year-old man originally from Guyana, appeared in court on charges connected to a firebombing campaign that targeted at least seven churches and businesses in the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City during June 2026.

Sayrange was arrested after a Molotov cocktail attack on a Brooklyn smoke shop on June 25, according to WABC-TV. A police report states he confessed at the scene, telling officers: "Yes, I fucking firebombed them. They're Muslims, scum and terrorists."

When taken into custody, he allegedly had two additional incendiary devices in his bag and told police he "was going to finish the job."

The Targets

Federal prosecutors say Sayrange attacked a range of locations, including the Iglesia Bautista El Mesias church in Ozone Park, the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Woodhaven, and a medical transport company in Cypress Hills, among others. Some properties sustained damage; others did not. No injuries were reported in any of the attacks.

The breadth of targets complicates any clean motive narrative. The victim properties span Catholic-adjacent Baptist congregations, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Muslim-owned businesses. Investigators, according to WABC-TV, have not been able to firmly establish why Sayrange chose this specific mix of targets.

The Apple Podcasts summary of The Daily News Now's coverage adds a specific detail not emphasized in other reporting: Sayrange allegedly asked whether a church should be "turned into a mosque" before throwing a Molotov cocktail at it. If accurate, that claim raises additional questions about what he actually believed he was targeting and whether anti-Muslim animus was the consistent thread across all seven sites.

Criminal History and Immigration Status

Federal authorities say Sayrange came to the United States from Guyana roughly two decades ago and was initially granted status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He aged out of DACA eligibility and has been in the country illegally since those protections lapsed.

His arrest record in the weeks before the firebombing is striking. He was arrested on June 12 for threatening someone with a metal knuckle knife, and again on June 16 for allegedly waving an axe at a man and threatening to behead him. Both arrests came before the firebombing spree began. The charging decisions on those earlier incidents, and whether they could have triggered detention proceedings, have not been publicly addressed by prosecutors or immigration authorities as of July 11, 2026.

The Fairest Counterargument

Critics of using this case to broadly indict DACA as a program have a legitimate point. DACA was designed for people brought to the United States as children, and the vast majority of recipients have no criminal history. Sayrange's DACA protections had already lapsed, meaning the program itself was not actively shielding him at the time of the attacks. Holding DACA collectively responsible for an individual's criminal conduct after his protections had ended is a stretch the facts don't fully support.

The question of how someone with two violent-weapons arrests in four days remained free to conduct a Molotov cocktail campaign is a legitimate law enforcement and immigration enforcement question. It has nothing to do with scapegoating DACA broadly. Those are separate issues, and conflating them doesn't help clarify either one.

Federal Charges

Sayrange is facing federal charges, which means the Justice Department has jurisdiction. Hate crime charges under federal law require proving that the attacks were motivated by the religion, national origin, or other protected characteristics of the victims. Given the mixed nature of the targets and Sayrange's own statement referencing Muslims, prosecutors will need to establish whether religious bias was a consistent driver or whether his motives were more erratic.

The open question prosecutors face: can they prove a coherent hate-crime motive across seven targets from multiple religious traditions, or does the case resolve into a straightforward arson and weapons prosecution without the hate-crime enhancement? That determination will significantly affect both the charges and the potential sentence Sayrange faces.