Niles Township D219 teacher charged with possessing child sexual-abuse material

A Niles Township High School District 219 teacher has been placed on suspension after federal authorities charged him last week with transporting child sexual-abuse material.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois announced on Friday that authorities detained Thomas Neal, 42, on June 17 in Mexico after allegedly locating images and videos of child sexual abuse material on his cellphone.

According to the press release, Neal was flying from O’Hare International Airport in Chicago to Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City when Mexican border authorities screened him and observed images on his phone that constituted child sexual abuse material.

Mexican border authorities placed Neal and his luggage — which included two laptops and six electronic storage devices — on a flight to Texas where Homeland Security Investigations agents observed “hundreds of files that constitute child pornography” on his phone, according to the release. 

The federal complaint against Neal also states the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023 received a tip from a “former romantic partner” of Neal that Neal “kept a two-terabyte hard drive of child pornography with him on a regular basis.”

The former romantic partner also apparently reported Neal to “High School A,” where the complaint states Neal is currently employed as a teacher.

Articles (2022, 2023) from Niles North High School’s student newspaper, North Star News, identify Neal as a Spanish and German instructor in the school’s World Languages Department.

D219 was made aware of Homeland Security Investigations criminal complaint against Neal on June 25, 2026, said Takumi Iseda, D219’s director of communications, in an emailed statement. 

“We are consulting with legal counsel and cooperating fully with authorities during this active investigation,” Iseda wrote.  

“D219 takes seriously any complaint or allegation against an employee, and we will continue to work with authorities to ensure appropriate actions are taken to keep our school community safe.”

While it was not immediately clear how long Neal has worked for D219, he is listed as a district employee on a 2019 compensation report. It is not clear whether any district students were directly impacted by Neal’s alleged possession of child sexual-abuse material. 

The complaint states Neal gave verbal consent to Mexican border authorities to search his property on June 17 after they selected him for a secondary screening.

While a forensic examination is ongoing, the complaint states, an investigators’ review of Neal’s phone located two videos and one image of child sexual-abuse material. The files were each apparently saved or created on March 21, 2023, April 23, 2024, and May 11, 2026, respectively.

Additionally, the complaint states, Snap, Inc. reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in May 2025 that the Snapchat username “polygot03” had uploaded two files of child sexual-abuse material to the app from the user’s device. 

An email address “associated” with the “polygot03” Snapchat account was “thomas.j.neal@[XXX].com”, the complaint states. 

That same email address was used to book Neal’s flight from O’Hare to Mexico on June 17 and it was included as “an identifier” in the tip the “former romantic partner” sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2023, the complaint states.

The complaint charges Neal with one count of transportation of child pornography.  If convicted, he could face five to 20 years in prison. 

As of Friday, he was detained in federal custody pending a detention hearing set for today in front of a federal judge in Chicago. 

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