Border Officer Convicted of Raping and Robbing Chinese Sex Workers
Jurors didn't buy Luis Uribe's defense: that he was targeted by "hustlers" for being an immigration officer.
A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent has been convicted of raping and robbing four alleged sex workers.
During a trial that began September 9 and concluded Thursday with a guilty verdict, federal prosecutors detailed how Luis Uribe—a CBP officer who primarily worked at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago—attacked four Chinese women, forcing oral and vaginal sex on them while, in at least one case, brandishing his government-issued gun.
Uribe was indicted last December and charged with 10 counts of deprivation of civil rights under color of law and one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence.
In court this month, his defense tried to impugn the credibility of his accusers. "They are hustlers," Uribe's lawyer, Michael Clancy, reportedly told the courtroom last week. "They are prostitutes. They are liars."
Because of his status as an employee of the Department of Homeland Security, Uribe was simply "the perfect mark" for a Chinese prostitution ring, Clancy claimed.
Jurors apparently saw through this defense, finding Uribe guilty on all 11 counts with which he was charged. The jurors reached a verdict just one day after closing arguments.
Uribe now faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of seven years and possible life in prison.
It's heartening—and a little surprising—to see a federal officer facing punishment for his crimes, especially when those crimes were committed against a group as marginalized and mistrusted as immigrant women accused of sex work.
But stories like this one still showcase one of the myriad downsides of the continued criminalization of prostitution.
Criminalizing commercial sex makes sex workers vulnerable to criminal cops and other types of law enforcement officers with ill intentions. Sex workers can't come forward about such attacks without leaving themselves open to potential arrest and criminal charges. And if they do come forward, they face an added obstacle: stigma. Sexual women in general—and sex workers in particular—have long been stereotyped as devious, unscrupulous, and untrustworthy, stereotypes that Uribe's defense tried to rely on in this case.
Stigma can't be fixed by public policy, but criminalization can. Ending this criminalization could make law enforcement officers less likely to see sex workers as "the perfect mark," and make sex workers more likely to come forward when they are victimized, by cops or anyone else.
"Sex workers often experience fear of law enforcement, including fear of potential deportation, arrest and prosecution, as well as cultural and historical trauma related to government officials and law enforcement," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan L. Shih wrote in a July 17 letter to Clancy.