A U.S. Border Patrol agent from Chula Vista and his brother-in-law will get a trial date set at a Dec. 7 hearing on a complicated federal case involving the agent arranging for law enforcement harassment of another man.
The agent, Martin Rene Duran, 46, and his brother-in-law Raymundo Estrada Figueroa, 48, also from Chula Vista, both were released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Nov. 13 after being arrested and charged by the U.S. Attorney’s office on Oct. 9.
Estrada was accused of molesting two boys in Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorney, and Duran used his official position to enter false information about the boys’ father into a federal computer database that resulted in the man being repeatedly stopped, searched, and detained.
Duran is charged with five counts of unlawful detention while acting under color of authority after he allegedly described the boys’ father as “known to carry firearms” and “associated with recent threats” to Border Patrol personnel.
When the boys’ father crossed the border, he was handcuffed, separated from his wife and children, and occasionally detained in a holding cell in multiple incidents in 2013, based on Duran’s false information.
Duran is also charged with making false entries in federal records to impede and obstruct the law within the jurisdiction of the department of Homeland Security. Estrada is charged with two counts of traveling into foreign commerce to engage into illicit sexual conduct in Tijuana.
After Duran’s home and garage were searched, he was charged in a second case with purchase and transportation of firearms in Arizona and taken into California in 2011 and 2014.
Duran posted a $109,000 property bond, and Estrada posted $100,000 bond after three weeks in jail. Both have denied all the charges in their not guilty pleas in U.S. District Court.
