Ex-INS Agent Sentenced in Ransom Scheme

A former senior INS agent was sentenced to 18 months in prison Monday for releasing illegal immigrants from a downtown lockup and turning them over to a partner who held them for ransom from their relatives in the United States.

Jesse Jerry Gardona, 41, a 15-year veteran at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, expressed remorse when he appeared before U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real.

His lawyer, Yolanda Barrera, sought a lighter sentence.

“He has a lifetime of law enforcement,” she told Real. “He did perform his job in an exemplary manner. Close friends have turned their back on him.”

Gardona, a member of the agency’s anti-smuggling squad, pleaded guilty in September to one felony count.

Also sentenced Monday was Gardona’s crime partner, Jose Jesus Quintanilla-Guzman, 34, a Mexican national who once operated a body shop in East Los Angeles. Quintanilla received a 34-month prison sentence. He already is serving a 22-year term for cocaine trafficking.

According to court documents, Gardona led a team of INS officers in the summer of 1998 to an immigrant smuggling drop house where they took into custody nearly a dozen people from Central America.

Gardona later arranged for the release of nine of those suspects. They were then taken by Quintanilla to a house on Cornwell Street and held until their relatives paid up to $1,800 apiece for their ransom.

Once the money was paid, they were put on planes to various destinations across the country.

Quintanilla’s girlfriend, Leticia Chavez, 24, of Huntington Park, was accused of aiding in the scheme. She pleaded guilty and spent five months behind bars.

Investigators said that Gardona was introduced to Quintanilla by one of his informants and that the INS agent borrowed thousands of dollars from Quintanilla to launch two business ventures that ultimately failed.

They said he was working off his debt by turning over the illegal immigrants to Quintanilla.