Posted on 02/26/2004 8:55:33 PM PST by Tamzee
January 29, 2004
Homeland Security Announces New Milestones in its Global Effort to Combat Child Sex Predators
Measures Include Publicity Campaign and Pact with National Child Protection Group
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today announced 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 (NCMEC). Today’s announcement follows a series of ICE enforcement actions over the last three weeks 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 last July, ICE agents have made more than 1,700 arrests nationwide, including more than 450 in the Los Angeles area.
At a ceremony this morning, 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 [1-800-843-5678 or 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 signed today also calls for NCMEC to alert ICE’s Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) 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:
1. The sharing of information to help track down child predators and possibly save victims. 2. 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. “Today’s agreement brings together two extremely powerful forces in the fight against child exploitation,” Garcia said. “By uniting the resources and authorities of ICE with the reach and expertise of NCMEC, we will be making the world a far more difficult place for child predators. The fact that ICE has already arrested more than 450 child predators in the Los Angeles area since July demonstrates our ongoing commitment to this effort.”
That prediction was echoed by NCMEC’s leadership. “Not only does this partnership strengthen ICE’s ability to capture child predators, it also increases NCMEC’s ability to identify, recover, and help child victims,” NCMEC President Allen explained.
Garcia also announced today that in the coming months, ICE will launch a public outreach campaign in conjunction with Operation Predator. NCMEC and other public and private sector organizations will join ICE as it conducts community meetings throughout the United States to raise awareness about child sexual exploitation. The events will educate parents, teachers, church staff, and others who work with young people about the threats posed by sexual predators and what can be done to protect their children.
At this morning’s 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 this week 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.
As part of its partnership with NCMEC, ICE agents are assigned full-time to process tips NCMEC receives on its CyberTipline and Internet site. Those leads are then sent to ICE field offices, such as Los Angeles, for follow up investigation. ICE has also established a toll-free number for the public to report illegal activity, including information about child sex offenders and others who put children at risk. The number, 1-866-DHS-2ICE, is monitored 24 hours a day.
That's too good for them. They should be fed into Uday's plastic shredder feet first.
While the concept of sex tours are revolting, what jurisdiction does the US Customs office have over activities that occur in another country? The age of consent for Americans outside the US is 18 regardless of the age of consent in their home state or in that nation.
Can Homeland Security also prosecute people for engaging in sex with a prostitute over 18 since prostitution is illegal in nearly every state in America? Can Homeland Security prosecute people for smoking marijuana in a country where it is decriminalized?
I don't disagree with the intentions, but does the FBI have any jurisdiction in another country where an activity is legal?
Pressure can be brought to bear on nations that tolerate sexual exploitation of minors. This is not an issue of American National Security, however.
I've seen the FR threads.
In modern wartorn Europe, there are orphans forced into prostitution/sexual slavery with UN involvement.
There are also several cases of UN advisors raping young teens in America and then fleeing to another country before trial.
It was a consolidation of a large number of agencies who all brought their old missions to the new organization it appears!
U.S. Customs doesn't investigate crimes internationally as a charity for other countries. This is referring to cases where a pedophile in Spain sends pornography to a U.S. citizen minor in Utah... or a pay child porn site is taken down in Florida and we have credit card info we can give to Germany as evidence that some of their citizens purchased child rape videos...
Child pornography and sexual solicitation over the Internet crosses borders more often than it doesn't. Try this one on... a thirteen year old U.S. minor in Washington State can be using a U.S. ISP to connect online and then jumping into an IRC chatroom hosted by a Canadian server... in that IRC chatroom she is talking to a French male 50 years old and he is soliciting online sexual behavior from her. She balks at accepting money from him to run away and meet him in Canada, but agrees to perform sexual activity over a webcam if he buys her a CD from ebay and sends it to her home. In the meantime, he downloads child porn from a newsgroup that was produced in Thailand and posted to the Internet from a man in the Netherlands... the Frenchman then emails that child porn to the 13 year old girl in Washington D.C.
Pop quiz... how many laws have been broken, in which countries, who has jurisdiction, which countries are willing to cooperate with information pertaining to the crimes that took place on our soil, which countries are willing to cooperate with criminals that are on their soil...
It is MESS... and I've seen several cases where child molesters fly to the U.S. from abroad for the purposes of having sex with American minors that they coerced into meeting offline.
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