‘He is the perfect mark’: Lawyer for Border Patrol agent accused of raping, robbing sex workers in suburbs alleges setup

Prosecutors told a federal jury Wednesday a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent used his badge and his gun to burst into hotel rooms and rob and rape four Chinese sex workers in a series of brazen attacks in 2022 that turned his duty to serve and protect on its head.

But a lawyer for Luis Uribe said in his opening statement that while Uribe is a weak and flawed man who indeed visited prostitutes, the alleged victims were liars who had sought his help with immigration issues before setting him up.

“He is the perfect mark, an immigration police officer,” said Clancy, urging the jury to be wary of the alleged victims’ “soft-spoken words.”

“They are hustlers. They con men on a daily basis and they’re gonna come in here and try to con you,” Clancy said.

Clancy said the evidence prosecutors will present to connect Uribe to the alleged assaults — including tollway records, Google searches, and DNA from hotel bedsheets — show that he visited prostitutes. But it will not prove he “ever used his employment, his badge, the fact that he was law enforcement to commit any crimes.”

“There’s a mountain of evidence that (Uribe) used prostitutes,” Clancy said. “There is a mountain of evidence that he’s a flawed human. But there is no evidence that he’s guilty of what he’s charged with.”

Uribe, 45, is on trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on a federal indictment charging him with 10 counts of deprivation of rights under color of law, and one count of brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

The indictment alleged Uribe used his service weapon and badge to force four victims — who were all of Chinese descent — to submit to sex or provide him with cash on six separate occasions in 2022. One of the four victims was attacked three different times, according to the indictment.

At the time of the alleged offenses, Uribe, who is also a U.S. Marines veteran, was assigned primarily to Customs and Border Protection’s offices at O’Hare International Airport, working on both customs and immigration issues, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Though the alleged incidents all took place years before Operation Midway Blitz put a spotlight on Border Patrol’s operations in Chicago, the indictment was filed in December 2025, making the lurid charges against Uribe another black eye for the agency as the Trump administration’s immigration campaign was still dominating headlines.

Uribe has been in custody since his arrest in December and faces up to life in prison if convicted. He appeared in court in a gray suit coat and open-collared shirt, listening to opening statements without expression.

In his remarks to the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shih displayed images of Uribe’s eagle-crested badge and government identification on a large monitor, saying he “had a responsibility to serve and protect” but “instead he robbed and raped.”

“We are here because (Uribe) was not only derelict in his duty, he violated it,” Shih said. “Actually, he perverted it. He went from investigating crimes to committing them.”

Shih also displayed images of the four alleged victims, describing how the assaults began in early 2022 against a woman known as “Tina,” a naturalized U.S. citizen with two grown daughters, including one in the U.S. military.

Shih said Tina answered a knock at her hotel room door, thinking it was housekeeping. Instead, Uribe pushed his way in, showed his badge and held a gun to her head, first robbing her of money she had in the room, then pushing her onto the bed and raping her.

After a similar attack occurred on another woman, word began to spread in the Chinese community, and a private plot was hatched to lure Uribe to a lunch meeting and get his photograph to disseminate as a warning, Shih said.

On March 23, 2022, Uribe agreed to meet a woman whom he’d previously paid for sex at the Royal Seafood Buffet in Hoffman Estates, where she snapped a photo of him next to a platter of what appeared to be steamed crawfish, prosecutors have alleged. The photo was shown to the jury during Shih’s opening statement.

While the warning did go out, the attacks didn’t stop, Shih said. That fall, he robbed and raped another victim at a hotel in Schaumburg. When police showed up to interview the woman and her friend, they provided the photograph from the seafood buffet, which they had before the attack, he said.

Clancy, however, said the only thing the photo proved was that Uribe was visiting with sex workers — an ugly fact that Uribe was “not running away from.”

“Is it wrong? Is it disgusting? Is there a morality problem with it? Absolutely,” Clancy said, banging a fist on the lectern for emphasis. “But that’s not what this courtroom is about.”

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com