DALLAS - A Garland, Texas, man, Jonathan Ramirez, 26, was arrested yesterday on a federal complaint charging possession of prepubescent child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldana.
Ramirez, who is in the U.S. illegally, made his initial appearance in federal court this afternoon. He waived his preliminary and detention hearings, and a U.S Magistrate Judge ordered him detained.
Yesterday, special agents with FBI Dallas Child Exploitation Task Force and the Garland Police Department executed a federal search warrant at Ramirez’s home. Law enforcement located and forensically reviewed multiple files of child pornography, including three video files depicting prepubescent child pornography. Ramirez used a peer-to-peer file-sharing program on the Internet to obtain the child pornography.
A federal complaint is a written statement of the essential facts of the offenses charged and must be made under oath before a magistrate judge. A defendant is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The maximum statutory penalty for the offense as charged is 20 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and a lifetime of supervised release.
The matter was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative, which was launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals, who sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/. For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources."
The FBI Dallas Child Exploitation Task Force and the Garland Police Department are conducting the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Sparks is in charge of the prosecution.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
