Murrieta ICE agent allegedly arrested for helping man get into US w/ organi..(update)
Murrieta ICE agent allegedly arrested for helping man get into US w/ organized crime ties
March 24, 2017 03:52PM
LOS ANGELES (KABC) --
A 10-year veteran with ICE and Murrieta resident was arrested on suspicion of helping a person barred from entering the U.S. back into the country.
Federal authorities arrested 42-year-old Felix Cisneros Wednesday afternoon. Cisneros was assigned to the Homeland Security Investigations Inland Empire Office.
A complaint filed against him alleges that he helped a man who was a legal permanent resident in the U.S. get back into the country. The man had previous felony convictions and was subsequently barred from entering again.
The complaint suggests that Cisneros took steps to get the man back into the states because he was acting on the request of a local organized crime unit with business interests in Mexico.
The man he helped was also employed by the organized crime unit to negotiate with a Mexican company. The complaint said the crime group asked Cisneros to help the man get back into the country after a trip to Mexico in 2013.
Cisneros is suspected of getting the man's passport that had been seized months earlier when he had attempted to reenter the states. He then facilitated the reentry at Los Angeles International Airport.
The complaint alleges that Cisneros convinced officers with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to return the man's passport and readmit him "likely through deception."
Cisneros faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison if convicted on the felony charges.
http://abc7.com/news/ice-agent-arres...to-us/1817416/
Former federal agent from Riverside County gets a year in prison for illegally aiding
Former federal agent from Riverside County gets a year in prison for illegally aiding man’s return to U.S.
PUBLISHED: November 5, 2018 at 11:37 pm | UPDATED: November 6, 2018 at 12:23 am
LOS ANGELES — A former immigration agent from Riverside County was sentenced Monday to a year and a day in federal prison for helping a Mexican national with multiple convictions re-enter the country illegally.
Felix Cisneros Jr., 44, must also serve a year under supervised release following his prison term. He was ordered by U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder to surrender on Jan. 23 to begin his sentence.
The Murrieta resident was found guilty of conspiracy and other charges after a four-day trial in April in federal court in downtown Los Angeles.
“This was gross abuse of a position of trust,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Donahue told the court.
The man Cisneros was helping get into the country was actually a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. but was not allowed to re-enter the country due to criminal convictions and an outstanding warrant for his arrest, prosecutors said.
Snyder said the defendant had violated the law and his oath, adding that “the crime is severe.”
Cisneros worked with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 11 years and was assigned to the agency’s Homeland Security Investigations office in the Inland Empire when charged last year.
Working as an undercover agent who investigated money laundering as well as human and narcotics trafficking, Cisneros was contacted in 2013 by a key figure of a criminal organization based in Southern California to assist the Mexican national.
At the time, the man was working for the organized crime leader in the oil and gas industry and had traveled to Mexico to negotiate business transactions. When he man tried to re-enter the United States in July 2013, he was detained at Los Angeles International Airport and his passport was confiscated because of an arrest warrant for fraud. Cisneros helped the felon — who has since been indicted — regain his passport and re-enter the U.S. at
Along with the conspiracy charge, Cisneros was convicted of acting as an agent of another person in a matter affecting the government, falsification of records in a federal investigation, and making false statements.
https://www.pe.com/2018/11/05/former...return-to-u-s/
