Houston immigration agents kicked out 25 child predators in October alone — including repeat sex offenders who had been previously deported and later sneaked back into the country.
Among the undocumented pedophiles that ICE sent packing were two known gang members and one Mexican national who had been deported twice before — each time after a sex offense involving a minor, the agency said.
“The 25 noncitizens that ERO Houston removed last month illegally entered the country and then proceeded to prey on the innocence and vulnerability of our children,” said Bret Bradford, director of the Houston branch of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Office (ERO).
They were all “convicted of at least one child sex offense while in the country illegally,” US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
ICE’s Houston ERO agency oversees 52 counties in southwestern Texas.
The sicko local deportees included a Mexican national and member of the Paisas prison gang with a history of “criminal convictions for committing lewd acts against a child,” the agency said.
Another booted Mexican was a member of the Colonia Durango gang with two prior convictions of larceny in addition to convictions of aggravated sexual assault of a minor and sexual indecency with a child.
A Salvadorian deportee had been convicted of assault against a government official in addition to his sex crimes.
Another Salvadorian had been booked for “installing an imaging device for sexual arousal in a manner to injure a child under the age of 17.”
The agency handed one Mexican national his third straight deportation. His rap sheet included cocaine trafficking, two drunk driving convictions, assault, unlawful carrying of a weapon and sexual indecency with a child.
Of the nearly 13,500 illegal migrants who ERO Houston deported in the 2023 fiscal year, more than half had prior or pending criminal convictions, the agency reported.
Migrant predators often prey on unaccompanied child migrants, who are crossing the border in record numbers.
US Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 130,000 unaccompanied minors in the 2023 fiscal year, and they are at extreme risk of “pregnancy, sexual and physical assault, sexually transmitted infections,” according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Between October 2022 and April, the Department of Homeland Security identified and/or assisted more than 2,600 victims of child exploitation and made more than 6,100 arrests for child sex crimes.
