St. Louis County woman sentenced for producing child pornography involving toddler
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said Raven A. Pointer, 27, pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one count of production of child pornography.
Pointer admitted coercing the toddler in 2022 into engaging in sexual conduct and using her phone to produce videos involving the child on six different occasions.
In August 2023, agents with the Department of Homeland Security learned that a man in Montgomery, Alabama, was distributing child sexual abuse material. Agents learned he had also been communicating with a woman, later identified as Pointer.
Father charged after 11-year-old killed in accidental shooting
Phone records later confirmed he received a video from Pointer that contained child sexual abuse materials. Investigators matched details in the videos to her and the location where the videos had been filmed.
Following her arrest, prosecutors said Pointer attempted to contact the victim and berated the victim's father for seeking restitution in the case.
A U.S. District Court judge sentenced Pointer to 25 years in federal prison and ordered her to pay $15,000 in restitution. Upon her release, Pointer will be on supervised release for the remainder of her life.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Man who fled immigration agents has died
Trump administration officials Saturday defended the aggressive campaign to find and deport unlawful immigrants even as a cannabis farmworker was pulled from life support Saturday, two days after he plunged from a roof amid the mayhem of a Ventura County raid. The death of Jaime Alanís Garcia, 57, announced by his family, comes in a climate of increasing tension marked by weeks of militaristic raids, street protests and violent melees involving agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Alanís' family said he was fleeing immigration agents at the Glass House cannabis operation in Camarillo on Thursday when he climbed atop a greenhouse and accidentally fell 30 feet, suffering catastrophic injury. But the Department of Homeland Security said Alanís was not among those being pursued, and that federal agents quickly called in a medevac in hope of saving him. In the aftermath, federal authorities said they detained more than 300 purported unlawful immigrants in the massive operation, and detained an unannounced number of protesters who sought to shut down the operation. Alanís was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he was put on life support. His niece announced his death Saturday on a GoFundMe page, which described him as a husband, father and family's sole provider. The page had raised more than $133,000 by late Saturday. 'They took one of our family members. We need justice,' the niece wrote. In a statement, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said consular staff in Oxnard were providing assistance to the family of Alanís. Consular officials said they were were accompanying Alanís' family both in California and in his home state of Michoacán, in central Mexico, where, according to newsaccounts, his wife and a daughter still reside. In addition, Mexican officials said they would expedite the process to return his remains to Mexico. Federal officials said that among those picked up in the raid were 10 minors, ages 14 and up. Eight of the teens had no parent with them. Because of that, federal officials said the legal cannabis farm, one of California's largest, is now under investigation for unspecified child labor violations. Alanís was not the only Glass House worker to take to the roofs. Irma Perez said her nephew, Fidel Buscio, 24, was among a group of men who climbed atop the high glass greenhouses. He sent her videos, which she shared with The Times, that showed federal agents on the ground below, and told her the workers had been fired at, with tear gas canisters. One image shows the broken glass of the roof. In another, Buscio has blood on his shirt and his arm bandaged, she said. He eventually was apprehended. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking at an event Saturday in Tampa, Fla., told reporters that getting the children out of the farm was part of the plan from the start. 'We went there because we knew, specifically from casework we had built for weeks and weeks and weeks, that there was children there that could be trafficked, being exploited and other criminal activity,' she said. Spokespersons for the Department of Labor's regional office had no response to questions from The Times regarding current or past investigations at the Glass House Farms operations, or of the local labor contractor Glass House used. That company, Arts Labor Services, did not respond to a request for an interview made through its attorneys. Glass House has said it did not violate labor law. Noem's assertion of a child labor investigation comes on the heels of a federal judge's order barring federal immigration officials from picking up people at random, based on their ethnicity or occupation. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said on X Saturday that one of the men apprehended in the raid had been convicted of kidnapping, rape and attempted child molestation. Immigrant rights groups accused federal agents of violating the constitutional rights of individuals by targeting brown-skinned people at Home Depots and car washes, arresting them without probable cause. Noem decried what she called 'horrendous' behavior of demonstrators who protested Thursday's raid in Camarillo by referencing videos showing rocks being hurled at the vehicles of federal agents, breaking out windows. 'Those individuals that were attacking those officers were trying to kill them,' she said. 'Let me be clear. You don't throw rocks at vehicles like that, and you don't attack them like that, unless you are trying to do harm to them physically and to kill them and to take their life.' Decades of work helping cannabis workers through the ordeals of federal drug raids didn't prepare Ventura County activist Sarah Armstrong for the mayhem and trauma she witnessed during the Glass House Farms raid, she said. A military helicopter swung low over fields to flush out anyone hiding in the crops, while federal agents fired tear gas canisters at protesters lining the farm road. In the crush of events, someone shoved a gas mask into Armstrong's hands and pulled her to safety. 'It was, in my opinion, overkill,' the 72-year-old woman said. 'What I saw were very frightened, very angry people.' Also among those on the protest line was California State University- Channel Islands student Angelmarie Taylor. She said she saw several agents jump on after her professor, Jonathan Anthony Caravello, after he attempted to retrieve a tear gas canister from under an individual's wheelchair. She said the agents fired the tear gas after Caravello and others refused to move out of the way of agents' vehicles. The show of force came without any warning, she said. 'They didn't gave us a dispersal order. They didn't say anything,' she said. Caravello, 37, is being held at Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong on Friday issued a temporary order finding that agents were using race, language, a person's vocation or the location they are at, such as a car wash or Home Depot, to form 'reasonable suspicion' — the legal standard needed to detain someone. Frimpong said the reliance on those factors, either alone or in combination does not meet the requirements of the 4th Amendment. Her ruling also means those in custody at a downtown federal detention facility must have 24-hour access to lawyers and a confidential phone line. Noem on Saturday accused the judge of 'making up garbage.' 'We will be in compliance with all federal judges' orders,' said Noem, adding that the judge 'made up' things in the ruling. 'We're going to appeal it, and we're going to win,' Noem added. Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell in Mexico contributed to this report.
Boston Globe
5 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Farmworker dies Saturday after fleeing raid this week in Southern California
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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Judge orders Trump administration to stop racial profiling in California immigration raids
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop immigration agents in southern California from "indiscriminately" arresting people based on racial profiling, saying that it had likely broken the law by dispatching "roving patrols" of agents to carry out sweeping arrests. The decision was a win for a group of immigration advocates and five people arrested by immigration agents that sued the Department of Homeland Security over what it called a "common, systematic pattern" of people with brown skin forcibly detained and questioned in the Los Angeles area. In a complaint filed July 2, the group said the area had come "under siege" by masked immigration agents "flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places." They alleged agents picked out targets to forcefully detain and question solely because they had brown skin, spoke Spanish or English with an accent, and worked as day laborers, farm workers, or other jobs. Those arrested were denied access to lawyers and held in "dungeon-like" facilities where some were "pressured" into accepting deportation, the lawsuit alleged. Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California wrote in her order that the group would likely succeed in proving that "the federal government is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers." Stopping the indiscriminate arrests was a "fairly moderate request," she wrote. Her order granted an emergency request, and the lawsuit is going. Mohammad Tajsar, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the group that brought the lawsuit, said, "It does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people's rights throughout Southern California." "We are hopeful that today's ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government's flagrant lawlessness." Frimpong "is undermining the will of the American people," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to USA TODAY. "America's brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists." Allegations that agents are making arrests based on skin color are "disgusting and categorically FALSE," McLaughlin said. "DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted, and officers do their due diligence.' More: Mentally ill, detained and alone. Trump budget cuts force immigrants to fight in solitude The Trump administration ramped up immigration raids across California starting in June, widening its focus from those with criminal records to a broader sweep for anyone in the country illegally. The crackdown sparked ongoing protests, which Trump dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to quell. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Judge orders Trump to stop indiscriminate ICE raids in California
