Four of the 11 people arrested in an Indiana police operation targeting alleged child-sex offenders are in the country illegally and come from four different nations, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Investigators said the suspects believed they were messaging underage girls online before traveling to arranged meetings for what they thought would be sexual encounters. Instead, undercover detectives were waiting for them.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued detainer requests for all four suspects.
Authorities identified the four men arrested in the Indiana sex sting as Filomeno Ricardo Flores Marin, Lucky Philip Udoudo, David Josue Gomez-Posada and El Hadji Babacar Ndiaye. (Getty Images; Department of Homeland Security)
The suspects were identified as El Hadji Babacar Ndiaye, a Senegalese national who was apprehended and released by the Biden administration after being caught at the southern border in Lukeville, Arizona, in September 2023; Lucky Philip Udoudo, a Nigerian national who entered the United States as a “gotaway” at an unknown time and location; Filomeno Ricardo Flores Marin, a Mexican national who illegally entered the country in Arizona in 2002; and David Josue Gomez-Posada, a Salvadoran national who illegally entered the United States as a juvenile in 2017.
FILE – DHS urged Indiana authorities to comply with immigration detainer requests. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“We are calling on Indiana to honor our detainers,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News. “All of their claims will be heard by an immigration judge, and they will receive due process. This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”
Marin faces two sex-offense charges, along with one count each of molesting a minor and enticing a minor for indecent purposes. His record also includes a previous arrest involving stolen property. ICE arrested him on Jan. 18, 2019, while he was assisting the Drug Enforcement Administration with an operation in Indianapolis, Indiana.
He was released on bond on March 7, 2019.
Udoudo is charged with child solicitation and sexual misconduct involving a minor. Gomez-Posada and Ndiaye each face a charge of child solicitation.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.,” the DHS spokesperson said.
DHS also said that seven of the 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE. The agency described collaboration between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement as essential to fighting crime and taking illegal immigrants into custody.
The department pointed to about 40,000 arrests in Florida and a separate two-week operation in West Virginia that led to 650 arrests of illegal immigrants.
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