U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Houston arrested nearly 3,600 illegal foreign nationals during the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.
From Oct. 1 through Nov. 12, they arrested 3,593 foreign nationals with extensive criminal histories.
Among them were 67 sex offenders, 51 child predators, 13 murderers, 10 wanted fugitives and 23 gang members, including an MS-13 gang member who after he was released into the U.S. by the Biden administration allegedly committed a triple homicide in Dallas.
Their combined criminal convictions include DWIs (366), aggravated assault (261), burglary or theft (103), weapons offenses (46), aggravated kidnapping, drug and human trafficking and smuggling, making terroristic threats, evading and resisting arrest, prostitution, hit-and-run, bribery, auto theft, forgery, falsifying documents, trespassing, arson, violent sexual assaults, multiple aggravated child sex crimes, among others.
Many were previously deported multiple times and illegally reentered the U.S. multiple times, ICE said.
“Our entire team understands how critical ICE’s mission is to public safety and national security, and despite many of them going without pay, they continued to show up every day and give everything they had to protect this community from dangerous criminal illegal alien gang members, child predators, murderers and rapists,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operation Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said. “As a result of those efforts, 51 dangerous child predators are no longer free to prey on our children, 10 fugitives have been apprehended and will now face justice for their alleged offenses, and thousands of other violent criminal aliens have been removed from local communities throughout Southeast Texas and will be removed from the United States.”