ICE detains man convicted in Santa Fe child sex assault case

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Antonio Perez-Perez, a Guatemalan national convicted in Santa Fe County of criminal sexual contact with a minor and bribery of a witness. The detention puts a federal law-enforcement spotlight back on a case that began in Santa Fe District Court and ended with a local jury verdict in late 2024.

A Santa Fe jury found Perez-Perez guilty on Nov. 22, 2024, in case D-101-CR-2023-00223. The First Judicial District Attorney’s Office said the jury found him guilty of sexual contact of a minor in the fourth degree and bribery of a witness, offenses that carried the case through the county court system before he was later sentenced.

Perez-Perez was also identified in court materials as Antonio Perez. The case drew public attention again after the district attorney’s office referenced the verdict on Facebook, tying the local prosecution to a broader federal custody action now handled by ICE.

For Santa Fe County residents, the sequence shows how a serious felony case can move from a county jury room to federal detention once a conviction is entered and a defendant’s identity is confirmed. The underlying prosecution had already reached a guilty verdict months before ICE took custody, and the later detention did not alter the county court record that documented the sexual offense and witness bribery convictions.

ICE has long listed sex offenses involving children among the kinds of crimes that can trigger immigration enforcement attention. In a Feb. 24, 2020, Decline Detainers document, the agency included criminal sexual contact and endangering sexual contact with a child among offenses appearing in detainer-related examples. That federal record is separate from Perez-Perez’s Santa Fe case, but it reflects the same enforcement focus on defendants with child-sex-assault histories.

The case also underscores the practical handoff between agencies that Santa Fe County residents rarely see directly. Local prosecutors secured the conviction, the court recorded the verdict, and federal officers later acted on the resulting criminal history. In a county where child sexual assault cases can move through the same courthouse that handles everyday criminal dockets, the paper trail matters as much as the arrest itself.