Del Rio man convicted of child pornography charges after swift federal trial

A federal jury in Del Rio convicted Samuel Sandoval Chavez on child pornography and failure-to-appear charges after a deliberation that lasted about 30 minutes, closing a case that moved from a CyberTip to a border apprehension and back into the Western District of Texas courtroom.

Prosecutors said the case began in January 2020, when a Google account linked to Chavez uploaded six videos of child sexual abuse material to Google Drive. Homeland Security Investigations reviewed the files, confirmed what they showed, and tied the account’s email address and phone number to Chavez, who is 42. Agents later searched the account again and found more material, including search terms such as “cute teenage Latino boys” and “teen boyfriend,” plus additional videos stored in a folder marked with a devil emoji.

Investigators then executed a warrant at Chavez’s home and recovered a cell phone that allegedly contained 71 images of child pornography and 82 images of child erotica. Prosecutors said forensic review showed the files were not merely received passively, but opened on the device. Chavez was indicted and arrested in Idaho, then released pending trial with an order to appear in federal court in the Western District of Texas.

He did not appear. Instead, prosecutors said, Chavez fled to Mexico and was later apprehended at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry in April 2025, a crossing that sits at one of the region’s busiest enforcement corridors. His failure to return to court became part of the case the jury considered alongside the possession charge.

The conviction adds another child-exploitation prosecution to a courthouse that has handled several such cases in recent months. On April 11, 2025, another Del Rio man was sentenced to 360 months in federal prison for producing child pornography, and a separate local defendant received a 97-month sentence in a possession case. Those outcomes underscore how often Del Rio federal court is being used to prosecute internet-fueled exploitation cases that rely on digital forensics, border coordination and rapid federal charging.

The case was investigated by ICE Homeland Security Investigations under Project Safe Childhood, the Justice Department initiative launched in May 2006 to combat online child sexual exploitation by coordinating federal, state and local enforcement. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says its CyberTipline is the nation’s centralized reporting system for online child exploitation, and it reported 29.2 million separate incidents of child sexual exploitation in 2024 after adjusting for bundled reports. Chavez now awaits the next step in federal court after a verdict that came almost as quickly as it took jurors to weigh the evidence.