A 71-year-old El Paso man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after U.S. border officers found pornographic videos on his cell phone of him having sex with underage teen girls in Juárez, officials said.
Enrique Ruvalcaba Mendez, of the Lower Valley, told U.S. Homeland Security Investigations that he would pay poor families in Mexico to have sex with their underage daughters, stated a criminal complaint affidavit filed by an HSI special agent.
Ruvalcaba Mendez was sentenced on Wednesday, Sept. 24, by U.S. Senior Judge David Briones in federal court in El Paso after pleading guilty on July 3 to a charge of transporting child sexual exploitation material, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said in a news release.
Federal court records show that two other charges of possession of child pornography and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign country were dismissed.
Cell phone videos lead to child sex case arrest at El Paso border
On Jan. 10, Ruvalcaba Mendez was returning from Mexico at the Bridge of the Americas when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, during a secondary inspection, found videos on Ruvalcaba Mendez’s cell phone showing him having sex with minor girls, the criminal complaint stated.
One of the videos — date stamped April 27, 2024 — showed him having sex with two females, one of whom was 15 years old, the complaint mentioned.
A special agent with the HSI Human Exploitation and Trafficking Group interviewed Ruvalcaba Mendez, who admitted to owning the cell phone and that he liked to record himself having sex, the complaint stated. He also gave consent to search his phone.
Ruvalcaba Mendez admitted to having sex with at least three minor girls, two girls were 15 and the other was 16, the complaint stated.
Ruvalcaba Mendez told the HSI agent that he would meet financially-struggling families in Mexico, take them out, buy them dinner and then afterward have sex with the girls with their parents’ permission, the complaint stated.
Ruvalcaba Mendez “stated the families he meets in Mexico are in financial need and the relationship is more of a quid pro quo relationship where he helps them with money, and they offer their daughters to him for sexual services,” the complaint stated.
Can CBP search a U.S. citizen’s phone?
All travelers crossing border ports of entry are subject to inspection without a warrant because of the border exemption to the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches.
CBP officers are allowed to search a person’s cell phone, camera, computer and other digital devices, a CBP information webpage stated. CBP noted that less than 0.01 percent of international travelers arriving at a port of entry had their digital devices searched in fiscal 2024.
The ACLU points out that the issue can be complicated, including a person’s legal status and whether they have privileged attorney-client material on a device. The ACLU advises not to travel with devices with sensitive information. If a CBP agent asks for a password, it is recommended the traveler input it themselves instead of divulging the password.
If a traveler doesn’t consent to a search on the spot, CBP could potentially take the device and it may not be returned for weeks or months.
Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda@elpasotimes.com and @BorundaDaniel on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: 71-year-old El Paso man gets prison in Juárez sex case, paid families for sex with girls
Reporting by Daniel Borunda, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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