Child sex predator arrests rise by 18% to 3,771 in fiscal 2019
Federal officials arrested 3,771 sexual predators they say targeted more than 1,066 children across the country during the past fiscal year, according to data released late Thursday. The Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, section of Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened 4,224 cases into child exploitation concerns in the United States and overseas from Oct. 1, 2018, through Sept. 30. “HSI is committed to eradicating individuals from our communities who seek to prey on children,” Eben Roberts, acting special agent in charge of the HSI Seattle field office, said in a statement. “HSI’s agents, in cooperation with our law enforcement partners, work tirelessly to find and bring to justice individuals who commit these heinous crimes. Moreover, we are dedicated to rescuing from harm’s way our most precious population – our children – and those who seek to harm them should consider this a warning.”
ICE is comprised of two entities: HSI and Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO. While ERO targets immigration-related violations, HSI is a general investigatory agency not limited to immigrants. A sample list of convicted child predators from the Pacific Northwest shows those taken in as a result of the operation had committed a variety of offenses, including torturing children and possession of child pornography.
In one case last October, Ty Lee Treddenbarger of Washington state pleaded guilty to charges related to taking pictures while he molested underage boys. Treddenbarger is the former coach of a youth bowling team in South King County who drugged the boys before molesting them. In another instance, Yazmani Gomez-Sandoval of Idaho was arrested for possessing child pornography. During the investigation, Gomez-Sandoval admitted to sexually abusing four young children while he was in Mexico between 2003 and 2006. In 2003, ICE launched Operation Predator, an international initiative to find, investigate, and go after people who have targeted children. The project has grown from a small operation in Northern Virginia to a multiregional operation across the country.
