During a three-day span the first week of April, 50 criminal illegal immigrants were apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a press release. The individuals were previously convicted of various charges including rape, sexual assault, possession of drugs, robbery, criminal trespassing, assault, and driving under the influence.
Enrique M. Lucero, an ICE field officer in San Antonio, said in a statement, “The results of this operation underscore ICE’s ongoing focus to arrest convicted criminal aliens who prey upon our communities and who chose to ignore our nation’s immigration laws.”
Nine of the captured aliens had previously been deported from the United States. Re-entry is a felony that can result in 20 year in federal prison sentence, according to ICE. One 56-year-old Mexican national arrested in San Antonio was previously convicted of sex crimes involving a child.
It is easy for one to wonder why–given these individuals’ serious criminal histories–the illegal aliens are not currently incarcerated.
Zack Taylor, Chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, said in an interview with Breitbart Texas that re-entry by convicted foreign nationals is unacceptable.
“It’s time for the U.S to get serious about immigration,” Taylor argued.
Taylor explained that there are many steps that the U.S. can take in order to deter previously deported immigrants from re-entering the country.
“We can start by taking away their incentives to be here,” he said. “All benefits: medical, food stamps, public housing, education, everything.”
Foreign nationals often do not share the same morals as U.S. citizens, Taylor said.
“People who live in other countries aren’t like us. They are usually born and raised under different conditions and have different values… Many of them have truly criminal minds. We cannot comprehend the type of punishment and isolation that these [convicted immigrants] need to have.”
Last month Breitbart Texas reported on a study conducted by Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff in Arizona. Arpaio found that 31 percent of the released immigrants ended back in U.S. jails after being processed for deportation. The results suggest that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may not be successfully deporting a significant percentage of arrested illegal immigrants.
Arpaio said of the results, “There are only two explanations. Either they’re out the back door [and] on the streets, with no action taken…They haven’t been deported, most of them. Or they have been deported, and they keep coming across the border.”
Many such illegal immigrants have been convicted of especially heinous crimes.
In March 2014, according to a Breitbart Texas report, 48-year-old Luis Gerardo Hernandez-Zanabia, an illegal alien and convicted sex offender, was arrested. Officers subsequently discovered that Hernandez-Zanabia was previously sentenced to six months in jail for sexually assaulting a child in Pasadena. In fact, he had been committing crimes on United States soil since 1986.
He had been arrested multiple times for entering the U.S. illegally. He was deported on April 19, 2006, and one time prior to that.
25 of the arrests occurred in San Antonio, 18 in Austin, and seven in Waco. The 50 apprehended individuals, 45 of whom were men, are citizens of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Canada, and Ukraine.
Follow Kristin Tate on Twitter @KristinBTate
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