ICE arrests 422 illegal migrants in Texas sweep, including some wanted for murder and sexual assault

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on Monday announced they arrested more than 400 allegedly illegal migrants in Houston, Texas, during a week-long operation, with some wanted for dangerous and serious crimes.

Officials said ICE agents would raid apartments, make the arrests, and then send the suspected migrants to immigration hubs where they would be processed and eventually sent back to their home country if confirmed that they were illegal.

A breakdown of the 422 arrests found that 262 have criminal convictions, 34 have pending convictions, 126 have other immigration violations, and 229 have final orders of removal, according to Fox News. 

ICE said one of the illegal migrants was convicted of murder in Colombia, and five were allegedly gang members.

"He has a homicide conviction in Colombia and was sentenced to 21 years there," ICE Houston Director Bret Bradford said. "He entered the United States illegally in February of 2024, was given a court date for an immigration hearing and released. He did not show up for that court date, so in March of this year, he was ordered removed by an immigration judge here in the United States."

Bradford said the Houston ICE Field Office has an operations center with analysts specifically designated to develop targets.

"They are doing database research to get the worst of the worst, the ones who have the most significant threat to public safety," Bradford said. "Then we want to look at the information we have on that individual, make sure it's a viable target, make sure we have good addresses, go out and do surveillance so we can see if we can a pattern of the subjects’ movements and behavior. So, we want to kind of combine the worst of the worst plus the ones we have the most likelihood of encountering and arresting, trying to merge those two things together to come up with the top targets."

Other serious crimes the migrants allegedly committed include aggravated assault, driving under the influence, robbery, terror threats, and sexual assaults on both children and adults. A total of 48 suspected illegal migrants drove while intoxicated, and 24 were convicted of aggravated assault. 

The operation comes after ICE arrested more than 1,100 illegal migrants in Florida last month, which included alleged gang members, violent offenders, sex offenders, fugitives and people who pose significant threats to public safety.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.