A 26-year-old Ecuadorian national was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison after investigators found dozens of child sexual abuse images and videos hidden inside a fake calculator app on his phone. Jefferson Chancay-Sanchez was sentenced in federal court in Del Rio, Texas, following a guilty plea to charges tied to transporting and possessing child pornography.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agents first apprehended Chancay-Sanchez on June 15, 2025, near Uvalde, Texas, after he crossed the border illegally near the Eagle Pass Port of Entry. The office's Department of Justice announcement details how agents searching his phone during that apprehension uncovered a hidden folder disguised as a calculator app.
What Agents Found on the Phone
Inside that concealed folder, agents discovered 31 CSAM images and one video depicting toddlers and adolescents, according to the Justice Department. The same search turned up 48 additional images and 15 videos of child erotica that had been downloaded via WhatsApp, the department said.
Chancay-Sanchez was indicted on July 16, 2025, on charges of transportation of child pornography and possession or access with intent to view prepubescent child pornography. He pleaded guilty to both counts on December 22, 2025, before U.S. District Judge Ernest Gonzalez handed down Friday's sentence, per the same Justice Department account.
The Federal Penalties at Play
Under federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, transporting child pornography carries a mandatory minimum of five years and up to 20 years in prison for a first offense, while simple possession can bring up to 10 years — or as much as 20 years when the material depicts prepubescent minors, according to Cornell Law School. Those ranges frame the 10-year sentence Chancay-Sanchez ultimately received.
The case was prosecuted under two overlapping federal initiatives. It falls under Operation Take Back America, a Department of Justice program launched in early 2025 under Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that pools federal task force resources to target illegal immigration, transnational cartels and violent crime, per the Department of Justice. It was also handled under Project Safe Childhood, the nationwide DOJ initiative launched in 2006 to coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement against internet-facilitated child exploitation, according to the Department of Justice.
A Border District Under Heavy Caseload
The prosecution ran through the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas, which Interim U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons has led since June 2025. The office covers 68 counties and 809 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, making it one of the busiest federal prosecutorial districts in the country, the Justice Department has noted. That volume was on stark display recently: federal prosecutors in the district filed 250 new immigration-related criminal cases in a single week from July 24 to July 31, 2026, the department reported.
Chancay-Sanchez's case is not an isolated one nationally. In a separate prosecution under Operation Take Back America, Ecuadorian national Stanlin Daniel Vasquez-Salinas pleaded guilty in September 2025 in Connecticut federal court to illegal reentry after being arrested on state charges involving commercial sexual abuse of a minor, according to Federal Newswire.
The Del Rio case also follows a string of similar prosecutions in the same border district, including a Uvalde man's Kik-linked sentence and a 30-year sentence out of the same Del Rio court division for production of child pornography. Whether Chancay-Sanchez will face deportation after completing his prison term, and whether investigators traced any wider WhatsApp file-sharing network tied to his case, remain open questions not addressed in the Justice Department's announcement.
