Enrique Tarrio biography: 13 things about Proud Boys leader born in Miami, Florida

Who is Enrique Tarrio?

Enrique Tarrio is an American far-right activist, businessman and organizer for public political events. He was born Henry Tarrio in Miami, Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States to Cuban-American parents.

Raised Catholic, Tarrio grew up in Little Havana, Miami. He identifies as Afro-Cuban.

As a businessman, Tarrio owned several small businesses in the security and surveillance industry. He is divorced and was romantically linked to Eryka Gemma Flores, a cryptocurrency promoter based in Miami.

Tarrio is a Republican. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. In 1997, he attended a protest for Cuban citizen Elian Gonzalez in Miami, which was the first historical event he participated in.
2. In 1999, he worked as a helper to a plumber, which was his first job.
3. From February 2003 to January 2006, he worked for NEXTEL as a district manager. 
4. In 2004, he was convicted of theft, sentenced to community service and three years of probation and ordered to pay restitution.
5. After his conviction in 2004, he relocated to a small town in North Florida to run a poultry farm but later returned to Miami.
6. In 2005, he started being involved in political activism.
7. In January 2006, he became the chief executive officer of Spie Surveillance and Automation Technologies.
8. In 2012, he was arrested on fraud charges and indicted for his role in a scheme to rebrand and resell stolen diabetic test strips.
9. Between 2012 and 2014, he was an informant to both federal and local law enforcement.
10. In 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for rebranding and reselling stolen diabetes test strips. He served only 16 months.
11. He had worked undercover in many investigations, his lawyer Jeffrey Feiler said during a federal court proceeding in Miami in 2014.
12. He was one of the leaders of the Proud Boys, which Gavin McInnes founded in September 2016, and Latinos for Trump, which was formed in Florida in June 2019.
13. From 2019 to 2020, while running for election to the U.S. house of representatives to represent Florida’s 27th Congressional District, he received a total of $1,951 from individual contributions to his campaign namely Benjamin Moseley, George Colella, James Freeman, John Boyle, Maria Gonzales, Patricia Sermonte and Rene Vicente Rivero. He withdrew before the Republican primary on August 18, 2020.

TIMELINE

2017

• In May 2017, he volunteered at an event in Miami for far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos and encountered a Proud Boys member who encouraged him to join the group.
• From August 11-12, 2017, he attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA to protest the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials.

2018

• In August 2018, he was one of the Proud Boys members who were suspended from Twitter for violating the microblogging site’s policies on violent extremist groups.
• On November 21, 2018, he became the chairman of the Proud Boys.

2019

• In January 2019, his friend Roger Stone, a Donald Trump ally, was arrested. After the arrest, he appeared outside the courtroom in a shirt emblazoned with the message “Roger Stone did nothing wrong”.
• On March 10, 2019, under his new Twitter name @HonoredChair, he tweeted that he would name an illegal immigrant and report him or her to Immigration and Customs Enforcement if any Proud Boys member’s personal information leaked online.
• On March 12, 2019, Twitter suspended his account. The site explained to him via an email that he had been removed for evading suspension, according to him.
• As a response to the assault on conservative blogger Andy Ngo in June 2019, he helped organize the End Domestic Terrorism rally held in Portland, Oregon, USA on August 17, 2019.

2020

• On September 30, 2020, he took to Twitter to react to Trump’s statement “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” during the presidential debate between him and Joe Biden. He tweeted, “Him telling the Proud Boys to stand back and standby is what we have ALWAYS done. I’m am extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight.” Hours later, his Twitter account was suspended.
• On October 1, 2020, as the state director in Florida for Latinos for Trump, he said that there are two Latinos for Trump movements. One is run by the campaign while the other is a grassroots movement started in 2016, according to him.
• He and Stone appeared in a video made on December 11, 2020.
• On December 12, 2020, he and other Proud Boys members scaled the fence of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C., USA and tore down a large Black Lives Matter sign on display.
• At around 12:50 p.m. on December 30, 2020, he received from Flores “1776 Returns”, a nine-page document that outlined a plan to storm government buildings around the U.S. Capitol. The document was based on a five-page document she received from Florida Blockchain Business Association founder Samuel Armes.

2021

• On January 4, 2021, the Metropolitan AME Church filed a lawsuit against him and the group. That day, he was arrested shortly after his arrival in Washington, D.C. and was charged with destruction of property.
• On January 5, 2021, he was released from police custody and a judge ordered him to leave Washington, D.C. and banned him from returning except for legal purposes.
• On January 6, 2021, he told his followers on social media to “do what must be done” and later in an encrypted group chat, he directed other Proud Boys member to “do it again”. That day, he did not physically take part in the breach of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. but he was accused of leading the advance planning and remaining in contact with other members of the Proud Boys during their breach of the U.S. Capitol.
• In July 2021, he pleaded guilty to destruction of property and to a misdemeanor count of attempted possession of a high-capacity magazine.
• In August 2021, he said during his sentencing hearing that he made a “grave mistake” on December 12, 2020 and he wanted to “profusely apologize” for his actions. He was sentenced to 155 days in the D.C. Jail in Washington, D.C.
• In November 2021, he filed a request for early release based on poor living conditions in the D.C. Jail, which was denied.

2022

• On March 8, 2022, he was arrested in Miami. He was indicted on one count of each conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and obstruction of an official proceeding and two counts of destruction of government property and two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers.
• On June 6, 2022, he, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola were charged with seditious conspiracy.

2023

• On May 4, 2023, a jury in Washington, D.C. found him, Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and Pezzola guilty of seditious conspiracy.
• In June 2023, D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal E. Kravitz ordered him, Biggs, Jeremy Bertino and John Turano to pay the Metropolitan AME Church $36,626.78 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
• On September 5, 2023, he was sentenced by District Judge Timothy Kelly to 22 years in prison.

2024

• On December 5, 2024, he testified in the trial of former Metropolitan Police Department officer Shane Lamond, who is accused of funneling him confidential information before January 6, 2021.

2025

• On January 20, 2025, he was pardoned by Trump.
• On January 22, 2025, he returned to Miami.
• On February 9, 2025, he turned 41.
• On February 21, 2025, he was arrested at the U.S. Capitol after he allegedly struck the phone and the arm of a female protester, who allegedly put a phone near his face.