A Weslaco immigration attorney was sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to bribery.
Roel Alanis, 41, pleaded guilty last April to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery of a public official, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Alanis admitted to paying employees from two Rio Grande Valley immigration detention centers for “alien detainee roster lists” with the intention of engaging migrants on those lists as his clients.
Benito Barrientez, of Lyford, and Damian Ortiz, of Weslaco, were both employed at the Willacy County Regional Detention Center when they sold Alanis the lists of detainees being held at the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, and the Port Isabel Detention Center.
Barrientez worked as a “classification clerk,” while Ortiz worked as a “senior program manager.”
The scheme lasted about a year — from Feb. 10, 2018 to Feb. 6, 2019, according to the indictment against Alanis.
“Barrientez and Ortiz would provide the Detainee Rosters to Roel Alanis or to others as directed by Roel Alanis,” the indictment said.
“Roel Alanis or others at his direction, would then visit alien immigrant detainees at detention facilities seeking employment in immigration matters,” the indictment further said.
In February 2020, Barrientez and Ortiz pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bribery of a public official. They are slated to be sentenced April 22 in Brownsville federal court.
The pair admitted to selling the detainee lists to Alanis and his sister, Cynthia Alanis.
At the time of her arrest, Cynthia Alanis, 29, worked as an assistant district attorney in Hidalgo County.
She pleaded guilty in February 2021 to making false statements to investigators with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Professional Responsibility — charges that had been laid out in an indictment handed up by the grand jury the previous February.
On July 7, 2021, Cynthia Alanis was sentenced to one year of probation.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. on Tuesday sentenced her brother, Roel, to 30 months in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. He must also pay a total of $30,000 in fines, court records show.
A fourth coconspirator, Exy Adelaida Gomez, waived indictment in favor of pleading guilty to the facts laid out in a criminal information document. She is slated to be sentenced next Wednesday.
Gomez worked as a detention officer at the East Valley Detention Center in La Villa.
According to court documents, the money and rosters passed through several different hands before making their way to Roel Alanis.
In one instance in 2019 — months into the scheme — Barrientez asked Gomez to obtain a list of La Villa migrant detainees. In a Jan. 4, 2019 phone call to Gomez, Barrientez said he had negotiated with Alanis to pay her $500 for the list.
Just days later, on Jan. 9, 2019, Gomez obtained the list and met with Barrientez in a Harlingen parking lot where Barrientez paid her the agreed-upon $500 for the La Villa roster, court records show.
That same day, Barrientez traveled to Lyford, where he then gave the roster to Ortiz.
Ortiz, in turn, traveled to Weslaco and delivered the roster to an unnamed associate of Roel Alanis in exchange for $350.
But the group still wasn’t done that day, according to court records.
The group continued to work on the scheme on the evening of Jan. 9 — this time to collect detainee rosters from the Port Isabel facility.
Roel Alanis took delivery of that list himself on Jan. 14, 2019, when he met with Ortiz in exchange for a “red gift bag” filled with $1,000.
Another instance, like a scene out of a Hollywood movie, involved leaving a bribe “under a flower pot at Ortiz’(s) residence,” court records show.
The coconspirators communicated often throughout January 2019 to discuss the scheme, payment, and avoiding discovery by law enforcement.
As a result of the scheme, Roel Alanis was given access to the personal identifying information of dozens of migrants, including names, dates of birth, country of origin, and — most importantly — to the internal ICE data that allows officials to track where detainees are within the detention system, their so-called “A-numbers.”
Ultimately, Roel Alanis, or his surrogates, would go on to meet with more than a dozen migrants to solicit their business in their immigration proceedings.
Roel Alanis must surrender himself to the custody of the U.S. Marshals to begin his sentence by April 22.
