ICE agents locked up illegal immigrants with prior convictions for child sex crimes, burglary and drug trafficking, as Homeland Security vows criminals who enter illegally will be removed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Monday arrested illegal immigrants previously convicted of serious crimes, including lewd acts with a child, burglary, heroin trafficking, money laundering and drug dealing, Breitbart News reported.
The roundup covered offenders from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, South Korea and Colombia. Their records stretched across California, Idaho, Massachusetts and Texas.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin framed the arrests as basic law enforcement under President Trump’s direction: people who enter illegally and then commit crimes will be found and sent home.
Mullin put the message in plain terms.
"If you choose to come to this country illegally and break the law, ICE will hunt you down and send you back to where you came from."
Francisco Luperico-Jimenez, of Mexico, was among those taken into custody. ICE agents arrested him Monday after a prior California conviction for lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years old.
That case alone shows why interior enforcement matters to families and local police. A prior conviction for sex crimes against a child is not a paperwork issue. It is a public-safety file that stayed open until agents acted.
Similar ICE arrests of convicted illegal immigrants have become a recurring enforcement theme as the agency prioritizes offenders with violent and sexual crime records.
Juan Carlos Galeana-Flores, also of Mexico, was arrested with a burglary conviction out of Idaho on his record.
Samuel Romero-Landestoy, of the Dominican Republic, had been convicted of trafficking heroin in Massachusetts.
Han Lee, of South Korea, was arrested after convictions tied to money laundering and a conspiracy to persuade, induce, entice and coerce one or more individuals in Boston, Massachusetts.
Juan Gonzalez-Ruiz, of Colombia, had a prior conviction in Texas for drug manufacturing or dealing.
Mullin summarized the sweep in blunt language the day after the arrests.
"Just yesterday, ICE arrested pedophiles, money launderers, and drug traffickers."
The secretary’s list matched the conviction categories in the named cases: child sex abuse, financial crime and narcotics trafficking. The agency did not release aggregate totals beyond the individuals identified in the report.
Expanded operations have also shown up elsewhere in federal enforcement, including ICE arrests rising at U.S. airports as officers widen the net nationwide.
Mullin rejected the idea that Homeland Security invents policy on the fly. He cast the arrests as straightforward execution of existing statutes and the president’s stated position on illegal immigration.
"We don’t make the laws at DHS. We simply enforce them. President Trump has made it clear: Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S."
That posture puts the focus on status plus criminal record. Each named arrestee was described as an illegal immigrant with at least one serious prior conviction. ICE’s role, in Mullin’s telling, is to locate those offenders and remove them.
Policy fights over removal authority remain active in the courts, including the Trump administration’s push at the Supreme Court on third-country deportations.
Conviction states in this set of cases included California and Massachusetts. Breitbart’s report labeled California and Massachusetts sanctuary states and called Boston a sanctuary city. Those labels describe local limits on cooperation with federal immigration officers. The underlying facts remain the convictions themselves and the later ICE arrests.
Sanctuary rules have drawn fresh scrutiny after other incidents tied to offenders who slipped through local-federal gaps, including cases where GOP lawmakers targeted sanctuary policies after crimes and flight from enforcement.
The account names five men, their countries of origin and the crime categories behind their prior convictions. It does not list the cities where Monday’s arrests took place, case numbers, sentencing details or current custody and removal status after the arrests.
It also does not state how many additional people, if any, were taken into custody in the same operation. Absolute calendar dates beyond the relative markers “Monday” and “just yesterday” were not included in the report.
Even with those gaps, the verified core is clear. ICE arrested illegal immigrants who had already been convicted of child sex abuse, burglary, heroin trafficking, money laundering-related conspiracy and drug dealing. The DHS secretary tied those arrests to a simple rule: illegal entry plus crime brings pursuit and removal.
Public frustration with weak enforcement has cut across party lines in other recent cases, including a Democratic mother demanding her party confront illegal immigration after a deadly crash.
Taxpayers and lawful residents should not have to guess whether child sex offenders and drug traffickers who are in the country illegally will be left on the street. When ICE locks them up, the system is doing the job voters expect.