He Smuggled an IRGC Operative
Into the United States.
His Phone Held Videos of Children Being Raped.

The defendant: Sharon Gohari, 48, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Iran, residing in Roslyn (Nassau County), New York and traveling frequently between Long Island and Iran throughout the operation.

Count one — alien smuggling: Pleaded guilty to bringing aliens into the United States for the purpose of commercial advantage and private financial gain, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2). Mandatory minimum 3 years; statutory maximum 10 years.

Count two — receipt of child sexual abuse material: Pleaded guilty to intentionally receiving CSAM, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A. Mandatory minimum 5 years; statutory maximum 20 years. Sentencing in the Eastern District of New York will be set after the Probation Office completes its presentence investigation.

How the second count surfaced: Per DOJ, federal agents investigating the smuggling operation lawfully searched Gohari’s electronic devices and recovered — in addition to smuggling-related communications — multiple videos of the sexual abuse of very young children, plus hundreds of photos and videos of women in New York City public spaces taken without their knowledge, including images apparently captured from concealed camera angles. He shared some of the CSAM material with overseas accounts, including in Iran. The CSAM charge is therefore not a separate “side” case — it is what the FBI found while pulling on the smuggling thread.

Step one — Tehran.Clients paid Gohari (DOJ describes the fees as “thousands of dollars” per client; a separate Iranian-smuggling indictment in the Western District of Texas this year alleges another operator charged up to $30,000 a head, the going industry rate). Gohari then arranged for clients to obtain a Mexican entry visa at the Mexican embassy in Tehran — a legitimate-looking document used as a passport stamp to get them out of Iran.

Step two — Istanbul.Clients flew Tehran to Istanbul, then Istanbul onward to Mexico City. Turkey’s relatively permissive visa regime for Iranian passport-holders made it the standard layover.

Step three — Tijuana.A Mexico-based ground crew that worked with Gohari handled hotel housing in Tijuana and walked clients to the U.S.–Mexico border to cross illegally. Gohari supplied counterfeit U.S. visas and green cards, fake travel documents, and instructions on what to say if encountered by Border Patrol.

The IRGC migrant.One of the men Gohari helped enter the United States in early 2021 was later detained by U.S. agents and admitted, under questioning, that he had previously carried out tasks — in Iran and in Malaysia — for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC has been a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization under 8 U.S.C. § 1189 since April 15, 2019. That migrant’s entry, in plain language, is a successful FTO infiltration of the United States by way of the southern border.

What the IRGC actually does abroad.The IRGC is the Iranian regime’s primary instrument for political assassination, hostage-taking, weapons proliferation to Hezbollah and Iran-aligned militias, and external plots against U.S. officials and dissidents. Federal prosecutors in EDNY and SDNY have repeatedly charged IRGC-linked operatives in U.S. courts in recent years for plots targeting Iranian-American journalists, former Trump-administration officials, and Saudi diplomats inside the United States.

What this defendant admitted abroad.The man Gohari smuggled in 2021 told federal agents he had “previously carried out tasks” for the IRGC in Iran and Malaysia. The DOJ release does not detail those tasks — for obvious reasons — but the U.S. government does not generally treat self-confessed IRGC operational history as a soft-touch immigration matter.

The vetting bypass.Iranian nationals applying through ordinary U.S. channels — visa interview, biometrics, derogatory-records check, Visa Mantis security advisory opinion — are among the most heavily scrutinized travelers in the U.S. consular system. The Gohari pipeline existed precisely to avoid that. The Mexican embassy in Tehran, a Turkish layover, and a Tijuana walk-across is, by design, a route that gives the U.S. government zero visibility into the traveler until the traveler is already inside.

Border encounters, FY2021–FY2024: U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded historically unprecedented southwest-border encounter volumes during the Biden administration — cresting above 2.4 million in FY2023 alone. Volume that high makes individual high-risk vetting structurally impossible for the agents on the line. A small Iranian smuggling operator routing one client a month through Tijuana is, in that environment, statistical noise.

Special-Interest Aliens (SIAs): CBP defines “Special-Interest Aliens” as nationals of countries with terrorism or national-security concerns — the list includes Iran. SIA encounters at the southern border ran in the thousands during FY2022–FY2024. The Trump-era border posture (full implementation of Remain in Mexico, expanded expedited removal, Title 8 enforcement, and the 2025 border emergency declaration) collapsed total encounters and gave HSI and FBI counterterrorism investigators the bandwidth to actually run cases like this one to ground.

What “catch” means here.The IRGC-linked migrant Gohari smuggled into the U.S. in early 2021 was eventually detained by federal agents — but only after he was already in the country. The Trump-administration framing of this case, articulated this week by FBI New York’s Barnacle and the National Security Division’s Eisenberg, is that the only reliable way to keep the next IRGC operative out is to keep the smuggling pipeline that brought this one in from operating in the first place.

What the prior administration would say in its defense.Honest account: Biden-era DHS and DOJ did continue to pursue alien-smuggling cases — the Gohari investigation itself was opened during that period and led to his arrest in May 2025, four months into the Trump administration. The case is not a Republican production from start to finish. The argument is narrower: that the prosecution and the public framing of this kind of case as a counterterrorism win, rather than as a routine immigration footnote, is a 2026 Trump-DOJ choice.

Acting Attorney General: Todd Blanche— named in the May 12, 2026 DOJ release announcing the plea.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security: John A. Eisenberg— whose National Security Division co-prosecuted the case alongside EDNY. His office’s involvement is the indicator that DOJ is treating the Gohari smuggling pipeline as a national-security matter, not a generic border case.

U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of New York: Joseph Nocella Jr.— the lead prosecutor’s office.

Assistant U.S. Attorney (lead trial counsel): Andrew D. Reich, EDNY National Security & Cybercrime Section.

Trial Attorney, DOJ Counterterrorism Section: Kevin Nunnally.

FBI New York Field Office: Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr.— led the field investigation.

FBI Counterterrorism Division: Assistant Director Donald Holstead— coordinated the IRGC-nexus piece from headquarters.

The case: United States v. Gohari, 1:25-cr-00183 (E.D.N.Y.). Initial complaint docket 1:25-mj-00172, filed in Brooklyn on May 19, 2025. Sentencing date will be set by the assigned district judge after the Probation Office files its presentence report; under the binding statutory minimums, Gohari faces no less than 5 years in federal prison and as much as 30.