National Security Investigations Division

Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit

History and Mission

Prior to the creation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, human rights violator related investigations were undertaken by the National Security Unit of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. Following the establishment of ICE in early 2003, the Office of Investigations formed a stand-alone unit to manage the national activities of the new agency in this particularly specialized law enforcement discipline. This unit is the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit (HRVWCU). The unit mission is twofold:

• Prevent the admission of foreign war crimes suspects, persecutors and human rights abusers into the United States.
• Identify, prosecute and ultimately remove such offenders who are already unlawfully in the United States.

Working in conjunction with our counterpart Human Rights Law Division (HRLD) within the Office of the Principle Legal Advisor, the HRVWCU manages all ICE associated investigative activities pertaining to foreign human rights related offenses.  These acts range from genocide and torture to serious violations of religious freedoms.

Historically, the United States has been a beacon for those individuals and families seeking to escape armed conflicts, persecution or even genocide.  More refugees are granted admission into the United States than to any other nation annually. Unfortunately, based on past experience, foreign human rights violators also seek to gain admission into the U.S. Some of these offenders are attempting to evade prosecution and punishment for abuses they have committed in their home countries.  Others seek to enjoy the fruits of their crimes in our open society.  ICE enforcement efforts support of the wider U.S. government position that the presence of such violators in the United States tarnishes the long-held commitment of our nation to offer safety and sanctuary for victims of persecution and war crimes. Further, because many are former officials of regimes that were potentially hostile to the United States or its interests, ICE considers human rights violators to be national security threats as well.

Because these offenders seek to blend into our society (often among those whom they persecuted), there is no precise method where their numbers can be accurately estimated. Regardless, these cases represent an investigative priority for ICE, due to the gravity of their crimes abroad and the domestic national security implications. As of December 2008, ICE has nearly 170 active investigations and is pursuing over 1,000 leads and removal cases involving suspects from approximately 89 different countries. These cases are predominantly focused on Central and South America, Haiti, the former Yugoslavia, China, and Africa. They represent cases in various stages of investigation, prosecution, or removal proceedings.

ICE Combined Authorities

In pursuing foreign war crimes or human rights abuse suspects, ICE is uniquely situated to employ its combined authorities under both criminal and immigration law. Under existing federal criminal statutes, where the United States can exercise jurisdiction over the actual foreign offenses (such as torture, genocide, war crimes or the use of child soldiers), we work with our partners in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to seek such charges. Where we cannot exercise such jurisdiction, we pursue criminal charges related to false statements and material misrepresentations made by these offenders on refugee, visa, resident or citizenship applications. Where substantial monetary assets based on an offender’s human rights abuses or war crimes are identified in our jurisdiction, ICE seeks to use its authorities to undertake the seizure of such assets. In addition to these wide-ranging criminal remedies, ICE uses its authority under U.S. immigration law in order to undertake the arrest, detention, and ultimate removal or deportation of these individuals to their respective home countries, so that they may face justice before their victims.

Protecting the Integrity of Our Immigration Laws

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), those who “…ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in” persecution are barred from gaining admission into the United States as a refugee, from obtaining asylum status or from obtaining Temporary Protected Status. However, in some instances, these individuals are potentially eligible to enter the United States on other grounds, and to subsequently adjust their status to lawful permanent residence or even obtain citizenship. As part of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), Congress partially remedied this problem. Section 5501 of the IRTPA amended the INA to include participation in torture or extrajudicial killings as grounds of inadmissibility and deportability. Further, Congress made this provision of the INA retroactive, so that human rights violators who had previously been granted legal status in the United States could now face having that status revoked in immigration court. ICE quickly moved to implement this change in law, using it as the grounds to successfully deport a former Ethiopian army officer who was directly involved in torturing suspected political opponents under the repressive Mengistu Regime. Most recently, under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, Congress again amended Section 212 (a) (3) of the INA to add either the recruitment or use of child soldiers as an additional ground of inadmissibility or deportability.

ICE Partnerships

As the primary investigatory agency for these offenses within the United States, ICE helps direct the broader United States government-wide effort to identify, prosecute and remove these individuals from our shores. Our key partners include the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, as well as the United States Attorney’s Offices nationwide; the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. ICE has a global footprint on these issues as well. Through our 54 ICE Attaché Offices in over 42 countries, we maintain partnerships with a variety of foreign law enforcement organizations or judicial bodies who share our goals with respect to identifying and prosecuting serious human rights abusers.  Finally, ICE maintains close contacts with a number of international or regional organizations who are active in this same effort, to include INTERPOL, the International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Significant Domestic Enforcement Success Stories

Since 2004, ICE has undertaken the successful apprehension and/or conviction of a number of significant human rights abusers or war crimes suspects found in the United States. In October 2008, Charles Emmanuel, a.k.a. ‘Chuckie’ Taylor, was found guilty in a Federal District Court in Miami, Florida, on six counts of committing acts of torture and conspiracy to commit torture. He ultimately received a prison sentence of 97 years for these crimes. These convictions represent the first successful application of the Federal criminal Torture Statute (18 USC 2340a) since it was enacted into law in 1994. Charles Emmanuel (pictured to the left of his father former Liberian president Charles Taylor), commanded the notorious Anti-Terrorism Unit that suppressed opposition to his father’s regime through brutal acts of torture and murder. This ICE-led investigation was groundbreaking in the scope of both the international and inter-governmental agency coordination needed to ensure a successful indictment and prosecution.  This included working in close partnership with the Department of Justice-Domestic Security Section in Washington DC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami; the FBI, the Department of State-Diplomatic Security Service, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The result was locating and bringing to the United States witnesses and victims who described Emmanuel's involvement in at least three killings and acts of torture using electric shocks, lit cigarettes, molten plastic, hot irons, stabbings with bayonets and even biting ants shoveled onto people's bodies.

In September 2008, ICE, in concert with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, Massachusetts, obtained criminal convictions against Carlos de Graca Lopes, a national of Cape Verde. Lopes was formerly a prison director in Cape Verde, but was dismissed from that position in 2006 after allegations surfaced that he abused and tortured prisoners under his charge. While under post-arrest investigation by Cape Verdean judicial authorities, Lopes obtained a non-immigrant visa by concealing his arrest and misrepresenting other facts to U.S. consular authorities. After his indictment in Cape Verde for multiple criminal acts (including torture), he was apprehended in Brockton, MA, and placed in removal proceedings. In sworn testimony before an Immigration Judge, Lopes committed perjury. Ultimately, Lopes was criminally charged and subsequently pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of visa fraud, false statements and perjury. In handing Lopes a 36-month prison sentence, the Chief Judge of the Federal District Court of Massachusetts specifically reflected that, “…that it is very important to send the message that the United States will not be a safe or cost-free haven for those who are alleged to have abused human rights.”

In May 2007, Ricardo Telmo Hurtado-Hurtado (pictured in foreground) pled guilty to one count of Visa Fraud in Federal District Court (Miami). In August of 1985, while serving as a Lieutenant in the Peruvian Army, Hurtado ordered soldiers under his command to gather and kill 69 men, women, and children who he suspected of supporting anti-government insurgents in village of Accomarca, Peru. When word of this massacre become public, Hurtado personally led back a smaller group of soldiers and proceeded to kill five additional witnesses to the initial crime. As a result of these actions, a Peruvian Military court convicted him for the abuse of his authority, but did not charge him for offenses related to the actual murders. In 1995, Hurtado was pardoned as part of a larger grant of amnesty by the Peruvian government to all military and police officials accused of crimes arising from fighting subversives and terrorists within Peru. In 2002, the Peruvian Supreme Court rescinded the amnesty for Hurtado’s crimes. Following this, he left Peru and entered the United States by committing fraud to obtain a visitor (B-2) visa. After his visitor visa expired, Hurtado subsequently remained in the United States without legal status. Based on information from Interpol officers in Lima, ICE Special Agents located and arrested Hurtado in April 2007. While serving his sentence for the Visa Fraud, a group of survivors and victims relatives sued Hurtado for civil damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act. A Federal judge subsequently found Hurtado liable for his role in the murders and entered a $37 million dollar judgment against him.  Hurtado remains in Federal Custody pending his extradition back to Peru to stand trial for his role in the 1985 murders.

In July 2006, Marko Boskic was convicted of two counts of Visa Fraud in Federal District Court (Boston, MA). Boskic was the target of an ICE-led investigation pertaining to his direct involvement in the killings of several hundred Bosnian Muslim men who were murdered on July 16, 1995, at a communal farm in Branjevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  This crime is connected to the wider executions of more than 7,000 men and boys that occurred following the capture of the UN designated safe-area of Srebrenica on July 10, 1995, by military forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic. Working in close cooperation with investigators from the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, Massachusetts, ICE and FBI agents were able to catalog his service in the notorious 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army. Following his apprehension in Boston, Boskic admitted to both his military service with this unit and that he was personally responsible for the murders of several dozen prisoners at the Branjevo Farm on the 16th of July.  He was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Following the completion of his sentence, he will be entered into deportation proceedings so he can be returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Denying Entry to Foreign Human Rights Abusers

ICE also works to prevent known human rights abusers from gaining entry into the United States. Under the agency’s Human Rights Target Tracking Initiative, ICE Special Agents and Intelligence Officers work with their national and international counterparts in a coordinated effort to identify serious foreign human rights abusers and take the necessary steps to prevent them from coming to our shores in an effort to evade justice abroad. A notable success was the interdiction of Isaac Kamali, who is listed in the top one-third of Rwanda’s 93 major genocide suspects. Kamali, who was traveling on a French passport, was identified and prevented from entering the U.S. at the Philadelphia International Airport. Upon being returned to Paris, he was taken into custody by French judicial authorities. While a French Appeals Court recently denied extradition of Kamali to Rwanda, France is now considering charging him in a French court for crimes committed in Rwanda.

Supporting U.S. Efforts to Promote the Rule of Law

Finally, ICE plays a key role in effecting justice for human rights abusers in their home jurisdictions. Two separate proceedings before the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina involve suspects who were previously located and arrested by ICE in the United States and who were returned to face trial for their involvement in war crimes. Both cases (Prosecutor v. Milorad Trbic and the Prosecutor v. Bozic, et al) involve allegations of direct participation in murders and other human rights abuses following the capture of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb military forces. Milorad Trbic was the Deputy Chief of Security of the Zvornik Infantry Brigade in July 1995—and was previously arrested by ICE in High Point, North Carolina. A judgment in this particular case is pending later in 2009. Zdravko Bozic and Mladen Blagojevic were military police officers in the Bratunac Infantry Brigade in July 1995—and were arrested by ICE in Phoenix, Arizona. After pleading guilty to criminal visa fraud, both were transferred back to Bosnia. In November 2008, Blagojevic was convicted by the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and sentenced to seven years for his participating in ‘crimes against humanity’ related to July 1995 Srebrenica killings. Bozic was subsequently found not guilty due to insufficient evidence of his involvement in the crimes.

Supporting Argentina’s ongoing efforts to account for criminal acts during their so-called ‘Dirty War,’ ICE undertook the arrest, conviction and removal of Ernesto Barreiro, a former major in the Argentine army who is accused of being the former chief interrogator of the infamous La Perla detention center. At the time of his arrest by ICE, Barreiro was residing in Northern Virginia. He was convicted of visa fraud for failing to disclose his prior arrest for human rights abuses in Argentina. He was successfully removed from the United States in October 2007. In May 2008, he was indicted by Argentine Federal authorities for his role in human rights abuses at La Perla and remains in custody awaiting trial.

No ‘safe haven’ remains our vision

The ultimate goal of ICE is to ensure that foreign human rights abusers and war crimes suspects never regard the shores of the United States as a ‘safe haven’ where they can enjoy impunity from the crimes they committed elsewhere. Across the wide spectrum of agency offices and programs, special agents, lawyers, intelligence officers, historians and analysts combine their hard-won expertise in this field to maximize our efficiency and effectiveness in conducting these complex investigations. Our agency efforts are further leveraged through the continuing close cooperation we maintain with a broad array of governmental, national and international law enforcement partners. We also actively engage in outreach activities among a wide variety of non-governmental organizations related to international human rights as well. Simply put, ICE remains committed to the common goal of civilized humanity: that war criminals and human rights abusers must never expect that their acts will to go unnoticed or that their crimes will go unpunished—regardless of how long ago they occurred, or how far away from them the perpetrators have managed to hide.