U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani has stated that a 45-year-old male from Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, has been indicted for trafficking child pornography while jumping the border.
Tong Sun has been indicted on one count by a federal grand jury. A criminal complaint has resulted in his immediate arrest; his first court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Hacker is forthcoming.
In early May, authorities are said to have caught Sun trying to enter the country illegally.
On May 8, they uncovered child pornographic movies while searching Sun’s phone. One video at issue in the allegations was nearly three minutes long and allegedly showed a girl younger than five.
Sun may spend up to 20 years in jail and pay a maximum fine of $250,000.
The inquiry was led by Homeland Security Investigations and assisted by Border Patrol agents.
The first time Sun crossed the border was at the beginning of May, just around when President Joe Biden’s administration finally abolished Title 42.
Border Patrol officials allegedly found films of youngsters in sexual imagery on Sun’s phone just days before Title 42 was formally lifted.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter I. Brostowin is prosecuting this case as part of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a DOJ-wide campaign in May 2006 to address the scourge of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The CEOS directs PSC, and it coordinates federal, state, and local resources to investigate, identify, and recover victims of child sexual abuse and capture and prosecute those responsible for the misuse.
On Thursday, police in Champaign, Illinois, detained, coincidentally, a man named Tong for having pornographic images of children in his hands.
The 32-year-old Juntian Tong was reported to police in January when it was discovered that he possessed sex videos of minors saved in a cloud account.
Investigators identified 53 illegal films in his cloud storage after gathering further evidence and getting a warrant to access his account.
