Child predators, gang members, and human traffickers were among the 142 criminal illegals deported to Mexico by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officials in the Houston area in just the last two weeks.
According to an ICE statement on Tuesday, the criminal immigrants were deported between May 19 and May 30. Those deported had been convicted of 473 criminal offenses and illegally entered the country 480 times.
According to the statement, 11 of those deported were convicted child predators, eight were “documented gang members,” and one had entered the country illegally 21 times before.
In addition, 43 deported illegals were convicted of serious assault and domestic abuse, 48 of drug trafficking or drug possession, 22 of human trafficking or human smuggling, and one of making terroristic threats.
According to ICE, one of the illegals, Alejandro Aguilar Vazquez, a 45-year-old Mexican national, had three prior convictions for child maltreatment.
Another is Luis Angel Garcia-Contreras, a 40-year-old Mexican criminal immigrant and documented member of the Surenos 13 gang. He has unlawfully entered the United States 21 times and has been imprisoned four times.
Benito Charqueno Zavala, a 60-year-old Mexican national, was found guilty of ongoing sexual assault of a minor.
According to Bret Bradford, head of the ICE ERO Houston Field Office, “Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly.”
“For the past few years, there was virtually no deterrent to illegally entering the country,” he told me. “As a result, millions of illegal aliens poured into the country, including violent criminal aliens, child predators, transnational gang members, and foreign fugitives.”
Texas, which accounts for more than 60% of the United States-Mexico border, has been one of the states hardest hit by the immigration crisis recently.
According to Bradford, “Many of these dangerous criminal aliens went on to prey on law-abiding residents in local communities right here in Southeast Texas.”
“This is just a small snapshot of those efforts as it only focuses on deportations to one country over the course of a two-week period, but it gives you an idea of how big this problem really is,” he told me.
Ammon Blair, senior scholar at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, described the scope of the ongoing problem in Texas and across the country. He stated to Fox News Digital that the deportation of 142 criminal illegal aliens in Houston “reveals a far deeper crisis unfolding across our nation—one that poses a direct threat to public safety, national security, and the rule of law.”
According to him, the 142 are “only a sliver of the 650,000 criminal aliens currently on ICE’s Non-Detained Docket, free to move through American communities with impunity.”
“Texas has become the front line in this crisis, not just geographically, but constitutionally,” he added, explaining that “nearly 100 counties in Texas have issued disaster declarations or formally declared an invasion, not for political theater, but because cartel operations, weaponized mass migration, and the release of violent offenders have made every community in Texas vulnerable.”
“This is not a policy disagreement. It is a public safety emergency,” he added.
Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, told Fox News Digital that President Donald Trump is “stepping up where Joe Biden failed.”