They Walk Among Us
Criminality inside the immigration-enforcement workforce — graded case by case against primary court records, not the advocacy list that surfaced them.
In July 2026 the Ohio Immigrant Alliance published They Walk Among Us, compiling dozens of ICE and Border Patrol personnel charged or convicted of sexual, family, and lethal violence. We treat that list the way we treat any advocacy dataset: as a lead sheet, not a citation. Every case below is pulled to its own docket, indictment, DOJ release, or contemporaneous local reporting and graded on that record alone — and one of the list’s own entries did not survive the check.
What this page is about
The immigration-enforcement workforce — ICE and Customs and Border Protection — arms and empowers tens of thousands of officers. A subset of them have been convicted of grave crimes: quadruple homicide, the murder of a partner and an infant son, cartel bribery, obstruction of justice, and sexual offenses against minors. Those cases are documented, graded FACT, and named below.
But the point of this page is the discipline, not the roster. We separate what is proven from what is merely charged, keep the presumption of innocence for cases still on the docket, and hold the advocacy report’s headline percentages out of FACT entirely — they describe a hand-curated list and are never an agency-wide base rate. Where the list overreached, we say so in public.
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They Walk Among Us.
Criminality inside the immigration-enforcement workforce — graded case by case against primary court records, not the advocacy list that surfaced them.
The record, in order
Every dated event on this page, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.
- Apr 2006Frank Figueroa — ran ICE's Operation Predator, then pleaded no contest to exposing himself to a teenager
- Jun 2012Frank Johnston — senior ICE/HSI official, obstruction and fraud
- Apr 2018Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles — Border Patrol supervisor, murdered his partner and his infant son
- 2021John Daly III — retired Border Patrol agent, charged as the 'East Valley Serial Rapist'
- Dec 2022Juan David Ortiz — Border Patrol supervisor, quadruple murder
- 2025Ramon Marquez — CBP agent, charged with sexual offenses involving a minor
- Oct 2025Jorge J. Jimenez — Border Patrol agent, cartel bribery
- Feb 2026Brashad Johnson — the report's claim collapses against the record
- Jul 2026David Brouillette — ICE officer, a fatal on-duty shooting and a documented history
- Oct 2026Samuel L. Saxon — ICE field-office director, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators
An advocacy list is where the reporting starts, not where it ends
The Ohio Immigrant Alliance did real work assembling They Walk Among Us. But a name on an advocacy list is a lead, and a lead is not a citation. For each person below we pulled the primary record — a criminal docket, an appellate opinion, a DOJ or ICE press release, or contemporaneous local news — and graded the case on what that record actually says. A conviction that survives appeal is FACT. An open indictment is PROBABLY TRUE and named as charged, not proven. A case the record contradicts is graded FALSE / MISLEADING and kept in view as a correction. The report’s aggregate percentages describe its own 59-name sample and are held out of FACT: they are never presented as a base rate for the agencies.
The documented convictions, one at a time
Six cases where a court record establishes the conviction. Two are homicides, two are corruption/obstruction, two are sexual offenses against minors — each on its own primary source.
Juan David Ortiz — Border Patrol supervisor, quadruple murder
FACTJuan David Ortiz, a U.S. Border Patrol intelligence supervisor in Laredo, Texas, was convicted of capital murder in December 2022 for killing four women over a twelve-day span in 2018 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He used a Border Patrol-issued handgun. The conviction is a matter of Webb County court record and was covered contemporaneously by national outlets.
- Webb County (TX) capital murder conviction, December 2022; automatic sentence of life without parole; contemporaneous reporting (Associated Press, Texas Tribune, NBC News)
Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles — Border Patrol supervisor, murdered his partner and his infant son
FACTRonald Anthony Burgos-Aviles, a Border Patrol supervisor in Laredo, was convicted on two counts of capital murder for the April 2018 killing of his partner, Grizelda Hernandez, and their son — a child not yet a year old — in a Laredo park, and was sentenced to life without parole. On November 25, 2025 the Texas Eighth Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction, writing that it 'concludes there was no error in the judgment.' The appellate opinion is the primary source for both the offense and the sentence.
Jorge J. Jimenez — Border Patrol agent, cartel bribery
FACTJorge J. Jimenez, a Border Patrol agent since 2010 assigned to the I-19 checkpoint near Nogales, Arizona, was convicted by a jury in April 2025 of conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud and sentenced in October 2025 to 78 months in federal prison and a $15,000 fine. He took cartel bribes to wave pre-arranged 'load' vehicles through his checkpoint lane uninspected and fed his coordinators information about checkpoint activity. The case was investigated by DHS's Office of Inspector General and the FBI.
Frank Johnston — senior ICE/HSI official, obstruction and fraud
FACTFrank Johnston, a former Assistant Special Agent in Charge for ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, was convicted after two federal trials and sentenced in June 2012 to 24 months in prison plus $400,000 in restitution. His crimes: obstruction of justice, giving false statements to a federal prosecutor and a federal judge — he falsely claimed a cigarette-smuggling convict was providing 'ongoing cooperation,' delaying that man's prison term — and a scheme that paid his wife roughly $600,000 for little work. The case was investigated by ICE's own Office of Professional Responsibility.
Samuel L. Saxon — ICE field-office director, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators
FACTSamuel L. Saxon, an ICE Assistant Field Office Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations in Cincinnati, pleaded guilty in 2026 to a federal felony of making false statements to a Homeland Security official who was investigating his domestic-violence arrest; his sentencing is set for October 2026. The federal cover-up conviction is FACT on his own plea. The underlying state charges — domestic violence, felonious assault, and strangulation — remain pending and unadjudicated; he has pleaded not guilty to them, and we do not treat those as proven.
Frank Figueroa — ran ICE's Operation Predator, then pleaded no contest to exposing himself to a teenager
PROBABLY TRUEFrank Figueroa was a senior ICE official who ran the agency's Central and North Florida operations and had previously led Operation Predator, ICE's flagship program targeting sex offenders and child exploitation. In April 2006 he pleaded no contest to a state charge of exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl at an Orlando mall the year before. The no-contest plea is documented in contemporaneous reporting; his final adjudication and sentence (set for May 2006) are not in the reachable record, so we stop short of a flat 'convicted' and grade this PROBABLY TRUE. The irony was itself news: his arrest triggered a nationwide review of background checks on federal employees who investigate child sexual exploitation.
Open cases — named as charged, presumption of innocence intact
These two are serious charges on the public docket, but neither has a conviction in the reachable record. They are graded PROBABLY TRUE and named as charged — not proven.
John Daly III — retired Border Patrol agent, charged as the 'East Valley Serial Rapist'
PROBABLY TRUEJohn Daly III, a retired roughly-20-year Border Patrol agent, was DNA-linked by Mesa, Arizona police to a series of sexual assaults and indicted on multiple sexual-assault and kidnapping counts as the alleged 'East Valley Serial Rapist.' He is charged, not convicted, in the reachable record; we hold him below FACT pending a conviction on the docket and preserve the presumption of innocence.
- Mesa PD DNA linkage; Maricopa and Cochise County (AZ) indictments on multiple sexual-assault and kidnapping counts; trial disposition to be pulled before any upgrade to FACT
Ramon Marquez — CBP agent, charged with sexual offenses involving a minor
PROBABLY TRUERamon Marquez, a CBP agent, was charged in 2025 on 15 counts including sexual intercourse, oral sexual conduct, and sexual exploitation of a 16-year-old. The case originated in a referral from CBP's own Office of Professional Responsibility. He is charged, not convicted; a trial-setting and change-of-plea hearing was reported for October 2025 and the disposition is not in the reachable record, so this stays PROBABLY TRUE with the presumption of innocence. (The advocacy report's added detail tying the abuse to the Explorer youth program is not established in the reachable primary record, and we do not assert it.)
A killing that put ICE’s screening under scrutiny
This case is not a conviction and does not belong in the criminal spine. It belongs here, as a documented vetting-and-oversight question — framed as exactly that.
David Brouillette — ICE officer, a fatal on-duty shooting and a documented history
FACTOn July 13, 2026, David Brouillette, an ICE officer, fatally shot a man during an encounter in Biddeford, Maine. The Associated Press reported that Brouillette — an Army veteran — had a documented history of serious mental-health issues and violent behavior, and members of Congress, including Rep. Bennie Thompson and Sen. Chuck Schumer, publicly demanded answers about how ICE vets and trains its officers. What is FACT here is narrow: the shooting occurred, Brouillette was the officer, and his reported history prompted a congressional vetting inquiry. What is NOT established — and what we do not assert — is that the shooting was a crime: Brouillette said he acted in self-defense and, as of grading, was not criminally charged for it. This is a vetting-and-oversight case, not a conviction. It sits here precisely so its weight is not overstated.
The entry that did not survive the check
Running the bar case by case means some leads fail it. This one did. We keep it visible — a correction in public is the whole point of grading a list instead of reprinting it.
Brashad Johnson — the report's claim collapses against the record
FALSE / MISLEADINGThe advocacy report framed Brashad Johnson as an ICE agent who 'ran ICE background checks' and was 'convicted of soliciting prostitution involving a minor.' The primary record contradicts all three load-bearing elements. Johnson is a contract background investigator for the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (through the firm Peraton) — not an ICE agent. He was charged, not convicted, with a single misdemeanor prostitution count in a February 2026 Bloomington, Minnesota police sting in which the 'sex worker' was an adult undercover officer — there was no minor. He was one of 30 men arrested. 'A misdemeanor solicitation charge against a contractor in an adult-decoy sting' and 'an ICE agent convicted of soliciting a minor' are not the same claim, and we will not launder the first into the second. We grade the report's version FALSE / MISLEADING and drop it from the roster.
The mechanism, not the roster, is the story
A list of the worst individuals proves that bad people sometimes carry federal badges — true of any large workforce. The sharper question is structural: as the immigration-enforcement apparatus is armed, expanded, and rushed into the field, what happens to the screening and accountability that are supposed to catch these cases before they become body counts? The man who ran ICE’s anti-child-predator program pleaded no contest to exposing himself to a teenager. The official who obstructed justice was caught by ICE’s own internal-affairs office. An officer with a reported history of violence was hired, armed, and killed a man — prompting Congress to ask how he was ever cleared. The pattern the Policing the Poor hub documents is not that enforcement attracts monsters; it is that an apparatus which empowers faster than it vets is one where the worst cases are survivable — for the institution, if not for the victims.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- Texas Eighth Court of Appeals — Burgos-Aviles v. State, No. 08-23-00240-CR (Nov. 25, 2025), affirming the capital-murder conviction
- U.S. Attorney’s Office (D. Ariz.) — Border Patrol agent Jorge Jimenez sentenced for cartel bribery (2025)
- ICE / DHS — Former high-level HSI agent Frank Johnston sentenced for fraud and obstruction of justice (June 1, 2012)
- FOX19 (Cincinnati) — ICE supervisor Samuel Saxon pleads guilty to lying to federal investigators (July 21, 2026)
- Orlando Sentinel — Frank Figueroa (former head of ICE’s Operation Predator) pleads no contest (April 6, 2006)
- KYMA (Yuma) — CBP agent Ramon Marquez charged with sexual exploitation of a minor (Aug. 28, 2025)
- PBS NewsHour / AP — Lawmakers demand answers after ICE officer David Brouillette’s fatal shooting in Maine (July 17, 2026)
- FOX9 (Minneapolis) — the Brashad Johnson case as the record actually shows it (2026)