Operation Predator: Protecting Kids from Sex Crimes

By Jim Kouri, CPP
September 27, 2005

The Department of Homeland Security's US Immigration and Customs Enforcement created new milestones in Operation Predator, the Department’s ongoing campaign to combat child sexual predators worldwide. The advances include the signing of an agreement with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The announcement to the nation's police commanders, through the National Association of Chiefs of Police, follows a series of ICE enforcement actions in the Los Angeles area that have resulted in the arrest of 99 convicted child sex offenders.

These latest developments represent important milestones for Operation Predator, an ongoing Homeland Security initiative to safeguard children worldwide from pedophiles, Internet predators, human traffickers, child sex tourists, and other predatory criminals. Since Secretary Ridge launched the Operation in July 2004 ICE agents have made more than 1,700 arrests nationwide, including more than 450 in the Los Angeles area.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael J. Garcia and NCMEC President Ernie Allen signed a memorandum of understanding expanding the ongoing cooperative efforts between the two organizations. As part of that agreement, NCMEC will furnish ICE with evidence and leads it receives on child pornography and suspected child sex violators through its national CyberTipline.Com. In addition, ICE has agreed to provide NCMEC with access to child pornography images and identifying information contained in ICE’s data systems to assist NCMEC with its efforts to locate missing and exploited children.

The agreement also calls for NCMEC to alert ICE’s Federal Air Marshal Service when the organization receives an “Amber Alert” about the kidnapping, endangerment, or abduction of children that might involve the aviation domain. This action complements the new Code Adam Alert Program that requires all federal facilities to have a plan to quickly locate missing children. ICE’s Federal Protective Service is helping develop and implement that plan. The Code Adam Program is designed to protect the thousands of children housed in daycare facilities in federal buildings and helps identify and track those children who have disappeared.

The agreement marks an official collaboration between Homeland Security and NCMEC to combat child predators. The partnership will take place at two levels: the sharing of information to help track down child predators and possibly save victims; and a national public campaign to raise awareness about the facts behind child exploitation crimes, how families can protect their children, and how the public can work with ICE to provide tips and take predators off the streets.

At a news conference, Assistant Secretary Garcia pledged that ICE will continue to aggressively pursue child sexual predators and take them off the streets. The latest Los Angeles area Predator arrests involved targets in more than 20 communities in five area counties - Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange.

Among those arrested was Sostenes Garza-Sierra of Desert Hot Springs. The 69-year-old legal permanent resident was sentenced to eight years in prison for molesting several children he transported when he worked as a bus driver for the King City Transit Agency in Monterey County during the 1980s. Also arrested within the last week was Isidro Sanchez-Torres, a 35-year-old landscaper originally from Mexico, who was convicted in 1996 of sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl in a public parking lot.

These latest Los Angeles area Predator arrests involved criminal aliens from 11 different nations, including the Philippines, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Chile, Canada, Iran, El Salvador, Korea, and Peru. The majority of those taken into custody are lawful permanent residents whose crimes make them subject to removal from the United States. Those individuals will be placed in immigration removal proceedings. The criminal aliens who have no immigration status, or who have been previously ordered deported, can be removed without a judicial hearing.

Sources: Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, National Association of Chiefs of Police