Border officials reported a spike in arrests of convicted sex offenders crossing the border illegally.
Since the beginning of fiscal year 2021, Texas Border Patrol agents in Del Rio have arrested 95 illegal immigrants previously found guilty of sex crimes, which is a 3,166% increase compared to last year’s numbers.
In just one week, from May 17 to May 24, Border Patrol agents said they caught 10 convicted sex offenders. Among them were Mexican nationals who had been found guilty of lewd and lascivious acts with a child, forcible sexual abuse, sexual assault of a child under 14, sexual assualt of a child, sexual assault, and sexual conduct with a person under 13.
Two Hondurans were also arrested. The pair had a litany of convictions, including statutory rape and second-degree sexual assault of a child.
“The majority of these criminals were apprehended in our sector’s most remote areas, attempting to avoid detection by crossing far from populated areas,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin Skero said in a statement.
Border Patrol agents arrested another three convicted sex offenders between Saturday and Tuesday, Skero added. One had been found inside a car that was “being used for human smuggling.”
The uptick in arrests of sex offenders trying to cross the border follows the Biden administration’s decision to cancel Operation Talon, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation that removes convicted sex offenders who are illegally living in the U.S.
More than a dozen state attorneys general have challenged the Biden administration’s cancellation of the project, arguing it endangers the well-being of their citizens.
“The cancellation of this program effectively broadcasts to the world that the United States is now a sanctuary jurisdiction for sexual predators,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter to Biden officials. “This message creates a perverse incentive for foreign sexual predators to seek to enter the United States illegally an assault more victims.”
