A man convicted of sexually abusing a child under 14 was living in Redding decades after an immigration judge ordered him deported, until federal agents finally caught up with him. Kao Wang Saechao, a native of Laos who was in the United States illegally, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who tracked him down in the North State city.
According to Action News Now, an immigration judge ordered Saechao removed from the country back in 2005, more than two decades before he was actually taken into custody. The outlet reports Saechao also carries a DUI conviction out of Sacramento, in addition to the child sex abuse conviction that made him a target of federal removal proceedings in the first place.
A Removal Order Two Decades in the Waiting
The gap between the 2005 removal order and this arrest raises an obvious question that the available reporting does not answer: what kept Saechao in the country, and specifically in Redding, for so long afterward. Action News Now's report does not include his age, a case number, sentencing details, his current custody status, or any response from Saechao or an attorney to the allegations against him.
What is established is straightforward and serious: Saechao is described as a convicted child predator, per the station's account, and ICE agents located and arrested him in Redding last month. The underlying conviction, the DUI case, and the 2005 removal order have not been independently verified through court or government records in the reporting reviewed for this story.
Part of a Broader Federal Push
The Redding arrest lands amid a string of ICE and Department of Homeland Security announcements this year touting arrests of people with sex-crime convictions. In March, ICE said individuals with prior convictions for sex crimes were taken into custody as part of a California operation, describing it as part of the agency's ongoing commitment to public safety. A separate March release from the agency stated that a group of arrested people accounted for 761 child-sex offenses and 525 other criminal offenses ranging from homicide on down, though the full scope, locations and totals behind that figure were not detailed beyond the release itself.
In July, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that ICE had arrested more people it described as among the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, convicted of crimes including lewd acts with a child under 14. It is not clear from available reporting whether Saechao's arrest is connected to either the March California operation or the July sweep described by DHS, and no source reviewed for this story ties his case directly to those actions.
The Redding arrest was first reported under the byline of Kelli Saam, an anchor for Action News Now who rejoined the station's team in 2021.
