A federal judge sentenced a Honduran man who later became a naturalized U.S. citizen to serve more than ten years in prison following his guilty plea on charges related to the possession of child pornography and conspiracy to commit human smuggling. Border Patrol agents arrested the man and an alleged conspirator in April 2021 near the U.S.-Canada border in Burke, New York, after finding him with a group of Vietnamese migrants who had crossed the border illegally.
U.S. District Court Judge David N. Hurd sentenced 72-year-old Jose Angel Portillo-Lopez to serve 121 months in federal prison as part of a plea agreement. The judge added a ten-year period of supervised release following his release from prison. The sentencing stemmed from a plea agreement related to an April 2021 smuggling incident, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Carla B. Freedman.
Court documents obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that on April 3, 2021, Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents observed a suspicious vehicle with Florida license plates in Burke. The agents followed the vehicle until determining the driver had picked up suspected migrants who had crossed the border from Canada. Agents then conducted a traffic stop and immigration interview.
During the investigation, the agents identified the driver as Jose Angel Portillo-Lopez, a Honduran-born naturalized U.S. citizen. The agents identified Portillo’s front-seat passenger as a Guatemalan man without legal authorization to be present in the U.S.
The agents went on to identify the other four passengers as Vietnamese nationals who had just entered the U.S. illegally from Canada. Portillo told the agents that the Guatemalan man, identified as Rene Isabel Lima-Rivera, hired him to smuggle the migrants, the court documents stated. He said Lima instructed him to rent the van and was to pay him $500 for the trip. Lima told the agents he just worked for the smuggling organization.
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The agents arrested the two alleged human smugglers, processed the Vietnamese migrants under Title 42, and returned them to Canada.
Further investigation led to the discovery of at least two videos containing child pornography, a second criminal complaint obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.
According to the statement, an unknown man is seen sexually assaulting a young girl estimated by investigators to be approximately ten years of age. The sexual assault takes place in front of a toddler.
The second video depicts a young girl, estimated to be between seven and nine years of age, being sexually assaulted in a parked car.
Investigators said the first video had been received on Lopez-Portillo’s cell phone via WhatsApp on February 3, 2021. Investigators determined that the second video appears to have been sent from Lopez-Portillo’s cell phone to an undisclosed person on February 19, 2021.
The case against Lopez-Portillo was investigated by Swanton Sector Border Patrol agents from the Burke and Champlain Stations and special agents from Homeland Security Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey C. Stitt prosecuted the case.
Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.
