In Operation Restore Justice, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday that 115 victims of child exploitation had been rescued and 205 criminals of child sexual abuse had been arrested.
Utah caught three criminals, one of whom was the head of a public charter school for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade.
At a news conference in Washington, DC, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of the FBI Kash Patel released the operation report.
“If found guilty, these evil people will get the harshest punishment in prison, even life,” Bondi said. “We’ll find you, arrest you, and put you on trial.” If you are after a kid online, you will not get away from us. You will be caught by the FBI and the Department of Justice, and you will be charged.
All 55 FBI field offices, the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and US Attorney’s Offices across the country worked together on the project.
According to Patel, the hard work of removing child predators from American society, which is done by lawyers, agents, and other law enforcement, is “some of the harshest criminality we’ve ever seen.”
“People who work for the government have broken not only the law but also the public trust,” Patel said. “Teachers, police officers, and other professionals that we look to protect our children have not only broken the law but also violated the trust,” the statement said, making it clear to child predators what the Trump administration’s goal is:
“You will be hunted down and you will be prosecuted,” he said. “And that is a good thing to hear for the men and women who do this work all the time, and it’s also a sign of the safety we hope to bring to America.”
Supervisory Special Agent Dustin Grant is in charge of the FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force in Utah. He said that every day is a fire, which is a good thing.
“Our job is to find criminals on the internet who are targeting children, either for trafficking or sexual exploitation, and to identify them, break up the groups, and try to bring justice to our victims that we find here in Utah,” he told reporters at the FBI’s Salt Lake City headquarters on Wednesday.