News Releases and Statements

ICE maintains that cooperation by local officials is an indispensable component of promoting public safety. Policy makers who strive to make it more difficult to remove dangerous criminal aliens and aim to stop the cooperation of local officials and business partners, harm the very communities whose welfare they have sworn to protect.

Antonio Oswaldo Burgos, 48, of Portland, was sentenced to four months in prison, Monday for attempted bribery of a public official after trying to bribe a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officer.

Consistent with the agency’s protocols, the appropriate state health and local law enforcement agencies have been advised about the death, as have the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General and the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility. Additionally, ICE has notified the Indian Consulate of Mr. Singh’s death.

A jury has convicted Turhan Lemont Armstrong, 49, of 51 counts of fraud, money laundering, identity theft and other federal offenses in relation to a scheme that generated at least $3 million.

Ariel Boiteux, a 31-year-old Argentine national who masterminded an international extortion scheme against hundreds of people seeking romance through witchcraft and magic spells, was sentenced in federal court Monday to the maximum sentence - two years in prison.

Alexander Zelyakovsky, 46, was sentenced to nearly three years in federal prison followed by three years on supervised release with the first six months in home detention. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on Sept. 18, 2018.

The Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program was launched during a signing ceremony with Lieutenant Governor of Florida Jeanette Núñez, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, National Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Jonathan Thompson and ICE Deputy Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) David Marin.

Following a nearly two-year international investigation involving U.S. law enforcement and authorities in Germany and the Netherlands, federal prosecutors have charged three German nationals with being the administrators of Wall Street Market (WSM), which was one of the world’s largest dark web marketplaces that allowed vendors to sell a wide variety of contraband, including an array of illegal narcotics, counterfeit goods and malicious computer hacking software.

Moises De Jesus Ruiz-Mejia, 25, was arrested Wednesday evening outside his residence after ICE was recently alerted the Salvadoran government had issued an international arrest warrant naming him as one of 25 individuals wanted for aggravated homicide or attempted homicide of numerous victims, some of whom have yet to be identified.

Omran Ismail, 53, of Burbank, Illinois, was found guilty of both counts against him: one count of conspiracy to knowingly make a materially false statement to a licensed dealer and knowingly and willfully smuggle firearms on a common carrier, and one count of acquiring a firearm from a licensed dealer by means of a materially false statement.

Cesar Solovi-Valle, 33, an illegal alien from Guatemala and residing in Decorah, Iowa, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams to a combined term of eight months in federal prison on one count each of unlawfully using identification documents and illegally re-entering the United States.

Austin Jones, 26, a Chicago-area musician, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison for enticing several underage girls, some as young as 14 years old, to produce sexually explicit videos of themselves.

Following his Wednesday arrest, Angel DeJesus Torres, 27, from Mexico and residing in Donna, Texas, appeared before U.S. District Judge Scott Hacker on May 2. Judge Hacker charged Torres with receiving child pornography.

Jose Luis Reynaldo Reyes-Castillo, aka Molesto, 25, Miguel Torres-Escobar, aka Chamilo, 21, and David Arturo Perez-Manchame, aka Walter Melendez and Herbi, 20, are charged with murder in aid of racketeering, using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence and causing death through the use of a firearm.

According to court documents, Timurbek Khasanov, 38, participated in a scheme that involved at least six other individuals. The scheme was carried out by attaching electronic devices known as “skimmers” to gas pump payment systems – which collected the information captured when unwitting customers swiped their payment cards at the compromised gas pumps – and then encoding the stolen card numbers onto physical payment cards.

Manuel Diaz, 65, Corpus Christi, was sentenced to 180 months in federal prison April 30.  Diaz was also ordered to serve 10 years of supervised release after he completes his prison sentence during which time he will have to comply with numerous requirements designed to restrict his access to children and the internet.

Moayad Heider Mohammad Aldari, 31, from Jordan, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bringing in illegal aliens to include his role in a criminal scheme to smuggle Yemenis nationals and into the United States through Mexico.

ICE is reallocating resources to the Southwest border to investigate human smuggling operations and the use of fraudulent documents to create fake families seeking to exploit U.S. immigration laws. 

Luis Alberto DeLoera-Serna, 40, a Mexican man who is illegally present in the United States, was sentenced by Chief U.S. District Court Judge Leonard T. Strand, after pleading guilty on Jan. 11, 2019.

The arrests included four individuals in active duty U.S. military positions, a registered sex offender with a history of child abuse, and during one arrest, the suspect drove to the meet-up location in a stolen vehicle. The ages of the individuals arrested ranged from 21 to 70 years old.

Victor Manuel Campos Cruz, 27, was flown from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, to the Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport in San Salvador, El Salvador, on a charter flight coordinated by ICE’s Air Operations Unit.

Vallmoe Shqaire, 51, of Downey, an admitted member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, pleaded guilty on January 14 to unlawfully procuring U.S. citizenship. As a consequence of his conviction, Shqaire was denaturalized, and he agreed to be removed to Jordan upon the completion of his prison sentence.

Peter Sebastian Felix, 25, had his initial appearance in federal court Monday where a magistrate ordered him detained without bond. HSI Houston initiated this case, and HSI El Paso special agents arrested Felix April 18 after executing a federal search warrant at his eastside El Paso home.