Conspirators Sentenced In Alien Harboring Case

One Defendant Was a Police Officer with the Dallas Independent School District

DALLAS — Favian LaTorre, 57, of Dallas, was sentenced this morning, by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater, to one year and one day in federal prison, and ordered to pay $10,493 in restitution, following his guilty plea in February 2013 to one count of conspiracy to harbor an alien.  His co-conspirator, Gloria Palacios, 40, also of Dallas, pleaded guilty to the same offense and was sentenced earlier this month to 24 months in federal prison.  LaTorre must surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on January 7, 2014; Palacios has been in custody since her arrest in December 2012.  Today’s announcement was made by U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña of the Northern District of Texas.

LaTorre was a police officer with the Dallas Independent School District (DISD).

According to his filed factual resume, in July 2008, LaTorre began recruiting “F.P.,” who was 15-years-old, to come to the U.S. illegally to provide care for a young child he and co-conspirator Palacios had together.  LaTorre had taken his young child to El Salvador for a brief period during 2008, and during that time, F.P. had cared for the child in El Salvador.

LaTorre and Palacios promised F.P.’s parents that they would arrange for F.P. to travel to the U.S. with the help of a “coyote.”  LaTorre and Palacios also promised F.P.’s parents that they would pay to smuggle F.P. into the U.S. and that she would be safe.

F.P. traveled from El Salvador to the U.S. with the “coyote” hired by LaTorre and Palacios.  When F.P. entered the U.S. with the “coyote,” LaTorre picked F.P. up in Houston and transported F.P. to Palacios’s residence in Dallas.

F.P. lived and worked in Palacios’s residence, caring for LaTorre and Palacios’s young child, from September 2008 until approximately February 2009.  During this time, LaTorre concealed, harbored and shielded F.P., an alien from El Salvador, from detection in Palacios’s residence, and elsewhere.

The case was investigated by the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).  Assistant U.S. Attorney Errin Martin prosecuted.