PHILADELPHIA (PA)
NBC Philadlephia
By Vince Lattanzio
Editor’s Note: This special project features explicit content that may be disturbing to some readers. NBC10 does not identify victims of sexual abuse. To protect against further victimization, names — including those convicted — have been changed. Because of the nature of their work, NBC10 agreed to only use the first names of Homeland Security agents.
PHILADELPHIA — The photos are disturbing.
Children as young as infants forced to undergo sexual acts. Their assaults captured in time and then traded over the internet.
The videos are horrifying.
But it’s the audio that’s haunting.
“It makes you almost want to cry,” said Joe, a veteran special agent with Homeland Security Investigations’ Child Exploitation Unit in Philadelphia.
Part of a virtually unknown arm of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, the unit granted NBC10 exclusive and unprecedented access revealing how they bring to justice the worst-of-the-worst pedophiles operating online and identify and rescue their victims — wherever they may be.
Their fight is relentless.
CP, as the unit is nicknamed, receives new leads every week at its offices inside the U.S. Customs House in historic Philadelphia about people consuming, distributing and producing child porn in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.
The unit’s six male and three female federal investigators are broken into two types: Case Agents, who are similar to traditional detectives and Computer Forensic Agents, who scour computers, smartphones and other electronic devices for evidence.
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