Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested five suspected child predators during an operation in Omaha, Nebraska, between Aug. 12 and 14, the agency said in an Aug. 20 statement.
The undercover operation was carried out by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Omaha unit together with state and local partners. Among the five arrested and charged, three had prior convictions for sexual crimes against children and were also listed on sex offender registries, the agency said.
If convicted on the new charges, these three individuals could face enhanced penalties, likely adding 10 more years to any sentence.
ICE said the HSI is "delivering on President Trump and Secretary Mullin's mandate to protect America's children."
More than 5,000 child predators and human traffickers have been arrested since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, according to an Aug. 18 White House statement.
Trump has backed law enforcement agencies and empowered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "hunt predators instead of political targets," the White House said.
In its recent statement, ICE said that one of the arrested individuals, Bryan Dady, 48, a U.S. citizen, has been listed in Nebraska's sex offender registry for a 2023 conviction for enticing a 9-year-old girl. The person was also arrested in January this year on new charges alleging the grooming and enticement of a 13-year-old.
Another individual, Jocsan Aparicio Santos, 39, a Mexican citizen with lawful permanent residency in the United States, is currently on a sex offender registry for a 2010 conviction linked to assaulting a 15-year-old girl.
A third individual, Logan Trigg, 29, an American citizen, is also on a sex offender registry for a conviction related to sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
The fourth person, Law Eh, 39, a naturalized American from Burma, also known as Myanmar, was charged with possessing files containing child sexual abuse material, while the fifth, Tillian Hutton, 25, another U.S. citizen, is facing charges of sex trafficking children.
All five suspects intended to engage in sexual acts with children, according to ICE.
"These cases are not hypothetical; they show a real demand for the sexual exploitation of children in our community," HSI Kansas City Special Agent in Charge Rick Sabatini said in the statement.
"They show why law enforcement must continue to identify and disrupt offenders before they have the opportunity to harm a child."
According to ICE, the HSI Omaha Metro Juvenile Sex Trafficking Task Force has obtained 21 federal convictions for sex trafficking children since 2021.
The Epoch Times reached out to the public attorneys representing the charged individuals but did not receive any response by publication time.
According to data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, it received more than 113,500 reports of potential child sex trafficking last year, a 323 percent increase from 2024.
A child can be trafficked by family members, strangers, and gangs. In some cases, exploitation of children may not involve any trafficking. Instead, the children may be offered food, money, or shelter in exchange for sexual engagement.
Some of the risk factors of child trafficking include intergenerational sexual abuse, low self-esteem, substance abuse, gang activity, and developmental or physical disabilities, the center said.
Legislative actions have been taken to address the issue of child exploitation. On June 10, Trump signed the Secure America Act into law, which contained a provision to combat child exploitation.
The provision provided the Department of Homeland Security with $108.5 million to hire 200 new child exploitation investigators and analysts, according to a June 9 statement from the office of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced the provision.
Before the legislation was in place, Homeland Security employed seven full-time specialists to identify child exploitation victims, the statement said.
"That's two hundred new law enforcement officers to find and rescue kids trafficked by predators and a new initiative to coordinate local, state, and federal enforcement," Hawley said in the statement. "This is the biggest surge against online child exploitation ever by the federal government. It's time to rescue these kids."
In an unrelated operation, the U.S. Marshals Service said on Aug. 10 that 48 missing children from Massachusetts were rescued during a multi-agency operation tied to the FIFA World Cup.
The agency said the rescued children were between 12 and 17 years old. Several of them were found outside state borders after investigators tracked leads across the country and to multiple states. The children have since been reunited with their families or referred to child welfare and victim services, the service said.
In another major operation conducted in April, Operation Iron Pursuit, the FBI targeted alleged child exploitation predators across the United States. The effort led to the rescue of more than 200 child victims and the arrests of more than 350 individuals, the FBI said in a May 15 statement.
An earlier effort, the two-week Operation Relentless Justice conducted in December, resulted in 205 child victims being located and 293 alleged offenders being arrested.