News Releases and Statements

They serve warrants under hazardous conditions. They secure the airspace over the Super Bowl in Blackhawk helicopters. They go undercover to dismantle drug trafficking organizations. The work of special response team (SRT) members is often grueling and so is the training they undergo at Georgia's Ft. Benning.

Woman is charged with visa fraud in a criminal complaint filed November 17 in U.S. District Court.

Owners, managers and associates of several strip clubs in the New York City-area involved in an alleged international visa and marriage fraud ring were arrested Wednesday by agents with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS).

A local man pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to his role in a $1 million conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, as well as a conspiracy to commit identity theft.

The passageway, linking warehouses in San Diego's Otay Mesa industrial park and Tijuana, Mexico, is equipped with a hydraulic entry, elevator and electric rail cars.

A Virginia-based cell manager of a Mexican fraudulent document trafficking organization was convicted by a federal jury of luring rival document vendors to an empty trailer house in Little Rock, Ark., beating one to death and abandoning another individual bound and seriously injured.

A Texas man and woman pleaded guilty on Monday for their roles in trafficking Mexican females for compelled service at local bars and restaurants through force, fraud and coercion.

On March 9, 2010, Shawn Pound, 40, of Gowanda, N.Y., a New York State corrections officer at the time, possessed 190 images of child pornography stored on two computers at his residence in Gowanda. The two computers were seized by law enforcement agents during the execution of a federally authorized search warrant, and a subsequent search of the computers revealed the images.

A Guatemalan national, Miguel Angel Vargas-Cordon, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for alien smuggling and harboring in violation of the Mann Act. Vargas-Cordon transported an illegal alien minor with the intent to engage in illegal sexual conduct. The sentence is the result of an investigation conducted ICE's Homeland Security Investigations.

Edward Schlacht, a manager at a specialty pallet and box manufacturing company in northwest Detroit, was arrested Tuesday by agents with by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on criminal charges of knowingly accepting false documentation in the course of hiring undocumented workers.

Inocente Orlando Montano, 69, of Everett, Mass., was charged with one count of making false statements on an immigration application and one count of perjury.

Three people accused of misclassifying Chinese honey as rice fructose in order to avoid more than $1 million in duties have been indicted in federal court on charges related to smuggling goods into the United States and providing false descriptions of the merchandise.

The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, in collaboration with the National Crime Prevention Council and ICE's HSI-led IPR Center, have unveiled a new public education campaign to combat the purchase and sale of counterfeit and pirated products.

Following a four-week trial, a federal jury Tuesday convicted a Bay Area leader of La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, street gang of racketeering conspiracy and related charges stemming from a multi-agency probe spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Adolfo Payan Chavez of San Diego was taken into custody Sept. 18 at the San Ysidro border crossing, after federal agents discovered images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct on his laptop. Prior to his arrest, Chavez worked at Whittier Elementary School's Learning Center, providing one-on-one instruction to students with special needs.

Manuel Enrique Zelaya-Rodriguez, who was found guilty for sex trafficking a 15-year-old girl, was sentenced Wednesday to more than 15 years in prison following an investigation by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Zelaya-Rodriguez is an illegal alien who will be subject to deportation after serving his sentence.

Connell Wilson Cook admitted downloading several images of child pornography from the Internet, planning to later sell them online.

An upstate New York woman who was convicted of conspiring to import Ecstasy was sentenced to three years of probation and six months home detention with electronic monitoring. The sentence is the result of an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Peter Beichl was sentenced to 210 months in federal prison Monday after pleading guilty to charges related to the sexual exploitation of a child. Beichl was arrested in Cleveland by ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents in March 2011 after he flew from Germany to have sex with an 11-year-old girl.

Michael Karolus was sentenced on Monday to 10 years in prison for possessing child pornography. In March 2010, an ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent received a tip from the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children regarding a sexually explicit posting made on Craigslist. The post was traced to Karolus' home in Portland.

Seven individuals have been charged in federal court with drug smuggling following the discovery Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers of more than nine tons of marijuana inside a tractor trailer attempting to enter the United States at the Otay Mesa Commercial Port of Entry Tuesday.

In addition, Christopher T. King, 34, of Fort Worth, who has been in federal custody since his arrest in mid-July 2011, was ordered to serve a lifetime of supervised release following his release from prison. This sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldana of the Northern District of Texas.

Chad Salvatore, 38, of Alden, N.Y., is charged in the first five counts of the indictment with distributing child pornography on five separate occasions between Dec. 2, 2010, and Dec. 15, 2010. The next two counts of the indictment charge the defendant with receipt of child pornography between June 1, 2010 and July 11, 2010.

The defendants were involved in schemes that solicited and accepted millions of dollars in kickbacks from contractors between 2000 and 2009 in connection with construction projects in Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester County.