Ignacio Rodriguez

Introduction

Ignacio Rodriguez IV, 29, a former Webb County sheriff’s deputy in Laredo, Texas, was sentenced on 6 October 2026 to 240 months in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release, for sexually assaulting and violating the civil rights of a woman during a traffic stop. Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty on 23 April 2026, received the term from U.S. District Judge Marina Garcia Marmolejo, who heard testimony at the sentencing hearing about the stop and remained in custody pending transfer to a Bureau of Prisons facility.

Background Information

Rodriguez was a deputy with the Webb County Sheriff’s Office when he committed the offenses on 1 September 2024. That night, he observed a vehicle traveling into oncoming traffic and conducted a traffic stop, ordering the driver and a female passenger to exit the vehicle and stand near his marked patrol unit. He then turned off his body-worn camera. The passenger began recording portions of the interaction on her cell phone — footage that captured both women asking Rodriguez to let them go, and Rodriguez repeatedly telling them they needed to “convince him” before he took the driver’s phone and instructed the women to follow him to a nearby street.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Rodriguez pleaded guilty in April 2026 and received 240 months — twenty years — on 6 October 2026.

At the desolate location, the passenger remained in the couple’s vehicle while Rodriguez took the victim into his marked patrol unit, where he forced her to perform oral sex and groped her breast without her consent. At sentencing, the court heard that the victim and her passenger had repeatedly said they wanted to go home, and that Rodriguez told them, “No, you have to convince me,” before directing them to the desolate area. In imposing the twenty-year term, the court noted Rodriguez’s conduct was “brazen, calculated, and extremely cruel.” United States Attorney Aaron Reitz said the harm of sexual violence under color of law “reaches far beyond a single victim,” eroding community trust and undermining “what it means to wear the uniform,” and called Rodriguez’s actions “not only illegal, but immoral and disgusting.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The FBI and the Laredo Police Department conducted the investigation, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leslie Ann Cortez and Brandon Scott Bowling prosecuted. The passenger’s cell-phone recording — made despite the deputy’s own camera being switched off — became the evidentiary spine of the prosecution, corroborating the women’s accounts from the roadside through the moment Rodriguez separated the victim from her companion. The 240-month sentence removes Rodriguez from the community for two decades and stands as the district’s marquee color-of-law sexual-assault sentence of the year.

Current Status

Rodriguez remains in custody pending transfer to a federal prison facility. His twenty-year term is followed by five years of supervised release, and his conviction for violating the victim’s civil rights through sexual assault is final as to guilt. No appeal had been announced in the public record as of the sentencing announcement.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case ended a law-enforcement career in the harshest available way: a badge, a patrol unit, and a body camera turned off are now the fixed facts of a federal civil-rights conviction, documented in a sentencing record that will follow Rodriguez for the rest of his life. He will leave prison in his late forties as a convicted sex offender with a two-decade-old recording of his own conduct at the center of the file.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, “Former sheriff’s deputy sentenced for sexually assaulting woman after traffic stop” — source