Immigration authorities apprehended several hundred criminal migrants in a massive Houston operation that spanned only several days.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 646 illegal migrants, 543 of whom were foreign nationals charged or convicted of a criminal offense and living unlawfully in the United States, according to a press release from the agency.
The extensive operation was conducted in the Houston, Texas, area from Feb. 23 to March 2.
“In recent years, some of the world’s most dangerous fugitives, transnational gang members and criminal aliens have taken advantage of the crisis at our nation’s southern border to illegally enter the U.S.,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston field office director Bret Bradford said in a prepared statement. “After illegally entering the country, many of these criminal aliens have gone on to commit violent crime and reign terror on law-abiding residents.”
“Fueled by our unwavering commitment to protect the public from harm, and united in our determination to restore integrity to our nation’s system of laws, ICE and our law enforcement partners in Southeast Texas have banded together to remove these dangerous criminal aliens from our local communities and put an end to the lawlessness that they spread,” Bradford continued.
Among those arrested included 140 illegal migrants charged or convicted of an aggravated felony or other violent crime such as homicide, aggravated assault or domestic violence, according to the agency. Deportation officers also apprehended 52 illegal migrants charged or convicted of illicit narcotics offenses such as drug trafficking or possession of a controlled substance, 34 illegal migrants charged or convicted of a sex offense or child sex offense such as aggravated sexual assault of a minor, possession of child pornography or rape, and numerous other illegal migrants allegedly involved in heinous crimes were apprehended.
The agency added that documented gang members and human smugglers were among those arrested, marking a victory in U.S. law enforcement’s war on organized crime.
The Houston sweep is the latest in the Trump administration’s aim to conduct the largest deportation operation in the country’s history. Since resuming power, the Trump White House has issued a series of directives and administrative orders aimed at helping ICE agents locate, apprehend and repatriate illegal migrants.
Along with ICE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Diplomatic Security Service and the U.S. Marshals Service participated in the operation.
“In just one week working alongside our counterparts from federal, state and local law enforcement, ICE HSI special agents successfully executed 71 criminal arrest warrants and made 554 administrative arrests that included illegally present human smugglers, gang members, human traffickers, child sex offenders, drug traffickers and weapons traffickers,” ICE Homeland Security Investigations Houston Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz said in a statement.
“These collective efforts have made our local communities significantly safer and strengthened our national security and border security,” Plantz continued.
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Get them out of our country.
Keep it up – make America great again; Make America what it once was, a beacon of hope, and not a country to take advantage of, at taxpayers’ expense;
Some of those responsible for the border conditions and the out of control ILLEGAL immigration should be DEPORTED right along with those they brought into the country, just to show them what it’s like to live in a FREE society and to learn to protect it instead of destroying it.
Millions of men and women have DIED to protect our FREEDOM, just so that it can be carelessly thrown away by those who wish to remain UNDISCOVERED, to hide their crimes against America. .
Victory Hooray awesome