News Releases

Former hospital director sentenced to 10 years in child pornography case

EL PASO, Texas - The former director of case management at Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso was sentenced April 15 to 10 years in federal prison for receiving child pornography, following an investigation by special agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Omar Jose Magaña, 39, was ordered by U.S. District Judge Philip Martinez to forfeit his home, valued at $152,605, to the government. Martinez also ordered that Magaña be placed under supervised release for 20 years after he completes his prison term. Magaña pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography on Feb. 1.

ICE HSI special agents assigned to the Cyber Crimes Group executed a search warrant at Magaña's residence in 7500 block of Plaza Taurina Drive on Oct.14. They seized a home computer, two laptops, and related computer and electronic media, cell phones and cameras. A subsequent forensic analysis of the hard drives from the computers revealed more than 100 videos and more than 1,800 image files depicting child pornography or children being sexual exploited.

In a separate unrelated child pornography case, on March 11, U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone sentenced Brandon Shawn Gray to 135 months (11 years and 3 months) in federal prison, and seven years of supervised release. Gray pleaded guilty in September 2010 to transporting visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in interstate commerce. He was ordered to register as a sex offender.

Both cases were investigated by the El Paso Cyber Crimes Group under Operation Predator, an ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators by calling at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. For more information, visit www.ice.gov.