Dossier mode
They Walk Among Us: criminality inside the immigration-enforcement workforce
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the Policing the Poor hub.
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.
A subset of ICE and Border Patrol personnel have been convicted of grave crimes — but the story is the mechanism, not the roster: an apparatus that empowers agents faster than it vets or holds them accountable.
The convictions are FACT. The charged cases are named as charged. And where the advocacy list overreached, we say so in public.
How we grade a lead sheet.
- The Ohio Immigrant Alliance's July 2026 report 'They Walk Among Us' is a LEAD, not a citation. Each name is pulled to its own docket, appellate opinion, DOJ/ICE release, or contemporaneous local news.
- A conviction that survives the record is FACT. An open indictment is PROBABLY TRUE, named as charged, presumption of innocence intact.
- The report's headline percentages describe its own 59-name sample. They are held out of FACT and are never presented as an agency base rate.
Juan David Ortiz, a Border Patrol supervisor in Laredo, was convicted of capital murder for killing four women in 2018 and sentenced to life without parole.
Webb County (TX) capital-murder conviction, December 2022; automatic life without parole. He used a Border Patrol-issued handgun. Documented by national contemporaneous reporting (AP, Texas Tribune, NBC News).
Border Patrol supervisor Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles was convicted on two counts of capital murder for killing his partner and their infant son — and the conviction was affirmed on appeal.
Texas Eighth Court of Appeals affirmed on Nov. 25, 2025: 'concludes there was no error in the judgment.' Two counts of capital murder of Grizelda Hernandez and their son; life without parole. On appeal from the 49th District Court, Webb County.
Border Patrol agent Jorge J. Jimenez was convicted of taking cartel bribes to wave 'load' vehicles through his checkpoint lane.
Jury conviction April 2025 for conspiracy to commit honest-services wire fraud; sentenced Oct. 2025 to 78 months and a $15,000 fine. I-19 checkpoint near Nogales; investigated by DHS-OIG and the FBI.
A senior ICE/HSI official, Frank Johnston, was convicted of obstruction of justice and fraud — caught by ICE's own internal-affairs office.
Former Assistant Special Agent in Charge, HSI Los Angeles; convicted after two federal trials; sentenced June 2012 to 24 months + $400,000 restitution for obstruction, false statements to a prosecutor and judge, and a scheme paying his wife ~$600,000 for little work.
ICE field-office director Samuel L. Saxon pleaded guilty to a federal felony of lying to investigators about his domestic-violence arrest.
Federal guilty plea (S.D. Ohio); sentencing set Oct. 2026. The federal cover-up conviction is FACT on his own plea. The underlying state domestic-violence, felonious-assault and strangulation charges remain pending and unadjudicated — not treated as proven.
Frank Figueroa — who ran ICE's Operation Predator anti-child-predator program — pleaded no contest to exposing himself to a 16-year-old.
Orlando Sentinel documents the April 2006 no-contest plea; his final adjudication and sentence (set May 2006) are not in the reachable record, so we stop short of a flat 'convicted.' His arrest triggered a federal background-check review. Documented irony, carefully graded.
Below the conviction line — named honestly.
- John Daly III (retired Border Patrol): DNA-linked and indicted as the alleged 'East Valley Serial Rapist.' CHARGED, not convicted — presumption of innocence.
- Ramon Marquez (CBP): charged on 15 counts including sexual exploitation of a 16-year-old, from a CBP-OPR referral. CHARGED, not convicted — presumption of innocence.
- David Brouillette (ICE): fatally shot a man in Biddeford, Maine (July 2026) and had a reported history that prompted a congressional vetting inquiry. He claims self-defense and was NOT charged for the shooting — a vetting question, not a crime.
The report's own Brashad Johnson entry — 'an ICE agent convicted of soliciting a minor' — collapses against the record.
Johnson is a DoD background-check contractor (DCSA via Peraton), not an ICE agent. He was CHARGED — not convicted — with a misdemeanor prostitution count in a Bloomington, MN sting where the decoy was an ADULT undercover officer; there was no minor, and he was one of 30 men arrested. We grade the report's version FALSE / MISLEADING and drop it from the roster.
Why it matters.
A list of the worst individuals proves only that bad people sometimes carry badges — true of any large workforce. The structural question is sharper: as immigration enforcement is armed, expanded, and rushed into the field, what happens to the screening and accountability meant 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; an officer with a reported history of violence was hired, armed, and killed a man. An apparatus that empowers faster than it vets is one where the worst cases are survivable — for the institution, if not the victims.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenTrial dispositions for the charged cases (Daly, Marquez) that would move them from PROBABLY TRUE to FACT.
- OpenThe Orange County, FL adjudication record that would let Figueroa's no-contest plea be stated as a flat conviction.
- OpenThe documentable record on vetting and accountability rollbacks — background-check standards, training-hour cuts — that would establish the mechanism, not just the roster.