WIFLE-Enews  June 2006
WIFLE Officer Biographies

Catherine Sanz has 29 years of law enforcement service.  She is a Special Agent (SA) and is the Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  Ms. Sanz began her law enforcement career in 1977 as a police officer with the Federal Protective Service in Boston, Massachusetts.  From there she moved to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, where she taught the Basic Police Officer Training Program to agents and police officers. 

Ms. Sanz became a SA with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Atlanta, Georgia, working long-term narcotics and money laundering investigations for the next two and a half years. Joining the U. S. Customs Service (USCS), Ms. Sanz was assigned to the Vice President’s Joint Task Force focusing on narcotics trafficking in South Florida, then worked her way up to the position of supervisor in charge of managing investigations for the Customs Service's Office of Investigations.  In 1998 Ms. Sanz became the USCS National Program Manager for the Asset Removal and Identification Group Program and later promoted to Assistant Director for Asset Forfeiture. In 2002, she was again promoted and transferred on temporary assignment to the Department of Treasury to serve as the Assistant Director of the Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture. In March 2003, all U.S. Customs Agents were transferred to the newly formed ICE where Ms. Sanz serves as the Chief, Asset Forfeiture while still carrying out her temporary assignment with the Department of Treasury. 

Ms. Sanz holds a B.S. in Criminal Justice from Northeaster University and an M.A. in Forensic Psychology from Marymount University. She is married with no children.

Karen Ratke Jones currently serves as a Senior SA with ICE, DHS, at Headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

She began her government career in 1992, with a desire to use her foreign language skills (Spanish and French) and chose a position with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) as a District Adjudications Officer. After four years as a District Adjudications Officer, Ms. Ratke Jones became a Special Agent with INS and began investigating various immigration-related violations such as identity document fraud, immigration benefit fraud, and human smuggling and trafficking. In addition, she served for four years on a U.S. Secret Service led interagency task force conducting identity fraud and financial crimes investigations. 

In 2002, she was honored to receive the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Award for Investigative Excellence for her work as the lead case agent in the investigation and prosecution of a human trafficking scheme based out of the Republic of Cameroon, a unitary republic of central Africa. Ms. Ratke Jones graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in both Political Science and Modern Language and Linguistics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Rebekah Salazar is an Assistant Chief Patrol Agent at the Headquarters Office of Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), DHS, in Washington, D.C. She is assigned to Operations Planning and Analyses where she works on policy review. 

Ms. Salazar is a second generation Border Patrol Agent. Her father, Abel Salazar, retired after 32 years of Federal service. Ms. Salazar began her career in 1995 as a Border Patrol Agent in Temecula, California. Since then she has served as a Supervisory Border Patrol Agent in Imperial Beach, California, and El Paso, Texas. 

During her career Ms. Salazar has been trained as a nationally registered Emergency Medical Technician; recruiter; peer-support member; and, Explorer Advisor. In October 2005, Ms. Salazar had the honor of meeting the President and watching him sign the Homeland Security Appropriations Act for 2006.

Ms. Salazar graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Political Science and has completed the USDA Graduate School’s Executive Leadership Program.