WASHINGTON – Pablo Rosario, a former U.S. Border Patrol Agent stationed in El Paso, Texas, was sentenced today in federal court in El Paso to 24 months imprisonment for violating the civil rights of two illegal aliens. After release from prison, Rosario will be on federal supervised release for one year.
Rosario worked as a Border Patrol agent from 2000 to 2006. On July 26, 2007, Rosario pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the civil rights of two female undocumented aliens, a mother and her 15-year-old daughter. Specifically, Rosario admitted that he apprehended the two women on March 7, 2004, and fondled the victims’ breasts and genitals during the course of a search incident to their arrests. After the assaults, Rosario released the aliens without processing them.
“This defendant violated the public’s trust and committed reprehensible assaults against two innocent female victims,” said Rena J. Comisac, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. “This prosecution demonstrates the Justice Department’s commitment to aggressively pursuing law enforcement officials who willfully abuse those entrusted to their custody,” Comisac added.
The Civil Rights Division is committed to the aggressive enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws. In the past seven years of this Administration, the Division has convicted over 50 percent more defendants for color of law, or official misconduct, violations than in the previous seven years. The Division continues to set records in the enforcement of criminal civil law. Last year, the Division convicted 189 defendants for civil rights violations, which is a record number in the 50-year history of the Division. Last year’s record broke the record set in 2006.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General. Assistant United States Attorney Russell Leachman and Trial Attorney James Felte from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice prosecuted the case.
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