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Photo (Cleveland Division of Police via Facebook\/WPLG) <\/p>\nPublished:\u00a0January 8, 2026 at 10:53 AM<\/p>\n
lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpandPhoto (Cleveland Division of Police via Facebook\/WPLG) <\/p>\n
MIAMI \u2014 A longtime Cleveland police officer is facing federal charges in South Florida after authorities said he was caught with child sexual abuse videos at Miami International Airport after arriving on a flight from Colombia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
According to a federal criminal complaint, Officer Rafael Rodriguez arrived at MIA on an American Airlines flight from Bogota and customs officers selected him for a secondary inspection.<\/p>\n
Officers conducted a border search<\/a> on his cellphone and \u201csaw files containing, reflecting and depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct,\u201d the complaint states.<\/p>\n In the complaint, a Homeland Security Investigations agent described five videos found within the Telegram application showing \u201cprepubescent\u201d girls being raped and sexually abused. At least one of the files was downloaded before he returned to the U.S., it states.<\/p>\n Authorities said before he invoked his Miranda rights, Rodriguez told investigators that he was traveling from Colombia and lives in Ohio, volunteering that he was a Cleveland police officer.<\/p>\n A police spokesperson confirmed that Rodriguez, a 24-year veteran most recently posted to the city\u2019s airport, is now on paid leave, according to reports<\/a> by multiple<\/a> Cleveland news outlets.<\/p>\n Rodriguez did not show up in Federal Bureau of Prisons records as of Thursday morning and his online federal court case file did not list any past or upcoming court appearances.<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n Chris Gothner joined the Local 10 News team in 2022 as a Digital Journalist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0January 8, 2026 at 10:53 AM lead-art-block.fullscreen-enterExpandPhoto (Cleveland Division of Police via Facebook\/WPLG) MIAMI \u2014 A longtime Cleveland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":{"0":"post-110534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hialeah","8":"tag-hialeah","9":"tag-hialeah-headlines","10":"tag-hialeah-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/3be3b5ed-fb4b-43ce-8b.jpeg\")
Chris Gothner <\/p>\n