McALLEN — A man arrested during an early morning raid Tuesday told federal agents he had downloaded child pornography as recently as Monday, records show.
Ramiro Vasquez is accused of receipt of child pornography.
Court documents show that Homeland Security Investigation’s Rio Grande Valley Child Exploitation Investigation Task Force began investigation in January to identify people using peer-to-peer software to traffic in child pornography.
Agents identified the IP address offering to participate in the distribution of suspected child pornography, after which they were able to download several videos from that IP address made available for others to download which agents determined to be child pornography, the documents say.
Time Warner Cable Inc./Charter Communications informed agents that the subscriber linked to the IP address was Ramiro Vasquez, born 1978.
Around 6 a.m. Tuesday, court records say agents served a federal search warrant at Vasquez’s residence in the 1900 block of North Col. Rowe Boulevard, where they arrested Vasquez and found a computer on and actively downloading images and videos of children engaged in sexual conduct as defined by federal law, constituting child pornography.
HSI personnel were seen Tuesday morning around 7:30 a.m. carrying bags and boxes out of an apartment complex near the intersection of Col. Rowe Boulevard and Tamarack Avenue.
Officers could clearly be seen hauling out a computer.
McAllen ISD police personnel were also spotted on the scene Monday. A district spokesperson referred inquiries about the incident to ICE, who did not comment on the district’s involvement.
According to the documents, Vasquez said he had downloaded videos and images of child pornography as recently as Monday and agents conducted an initial on-scene forensic review of the material on the computer to confirm that it was child pornography.
