Border Protection officer to be held in custody while awaiting trial on sexual assault claims

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer accused of using his gun and badge to rape multiple women will be held in federal custody while awaiting trial, a judge ruled Monday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Keri Holleb Hotaling peppered a defense attorney for Officer Luis Uribe with questions about why she should expect him to follow orders while on release, given that he allegedly committed crimes while serving as a law enforcement officer himself.

Defense attorney Mary Judge eventually retorted, “I don’t think you’re going to release him,” as Holleb Hotaling ticked off concerns such as Uribe’s knowledge of electronic monitoring — and how to thwart it. Holleb Hotaling eventually found Uribe a “danger to the community.”

“It seems that the evidence is strong at this point,” Holleb Hotaling said.

Uribe remains employed by CBP but had been placed on desk duty before his arrest, his lawyer revealed during the Monday hearing. Authorities took Uribe into custody last Tuesday, and his attorney said he’d been “arrested at his desk.”

A Homeland Security representative did not comment. Uribe waved to supporters in the courtroom gallery before he was led away. Those supporters declined to speak with reporters before leaving the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

While arguing for Uribe’s release, his lawyer pointed to DNA evidence, collected after an alleged attack in 2022, which turned out to be a strong match for Uribe. Uribe’s attorney argued that authorities “didn’t think he was such a danger to the community that they needed to immediately arrest him.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shih told Holleb Hotaling that investigations take time, and that any delay wasn’t because “we didn’t believe he was a safety risk.”

“DNA takes time to come back,” Shih said. “Tracking down witnesses and victims takes time.”

A grand jury ultimately handed up an 11-count indictment against Uribe Dec. 4. Federal prosecutors have accused him of attacking four women in Chicago’s suburbs in 2022.

“[Uribe] is a serial rapist who turned his position as a United States Customs and Border Protection officer into a license to commit or attempt to commit gunpoint sexual assaults and robberies of four different women,” Shih wrote in a court memo.

Uribe’s victims were all of Chinese descent, the prosecutor added. The alleged assaults took place while he was working as a customs and immigration officer assigned primarily to O’Hare Airport. They’re unrelated to the “Operation Midway Blitz” campaign, which involved hundreds of CBP officers who descended upon the Chicago area this fall.

In his memo last week, the prosecutor detailed six attacks allegedly committed by Uribe in Schaumburg and Naperville between February and October 2022. The first allegedly began when the victim heard a knock at her hotel door in Schaumburg and opened it.

Uribe allegedly pushed his way in, held up an ID card, claimed to be a police officer investigating the victim and told her to cooperate. Then, he grabbed her head, pushed it on the bed, held a gun to her head and ordered her to perform oral sex, Shih wrote.

Similar attacks allegedly followed, and word apparently spread. That prompted a “boss,” likely based in China, to send a sex worker to meet with Uribe, Shih wrote. The boss wanted her to get a photo of Uribe to distribute and offer him a bribe to stop. They met at a seafood buffet in the northwest suburbs, according to the prosecutor.

Uribe was offered free sex to end the attacks, Shih wrote. Uribe agreed but “did not abide by the terms of the bargain,” the prosecutor said.