A cold-blooded killer from Colombia was among almost 500 illegal immigrants rounded up by ICE agents in a city-wide sting operation across Houston.
The killer, who has not been named, was detained this week in Texas as President Trump continued his crackdown on illegal immigration nationwide.
Fox News reported the arrest of the Colombian killer after joining ICE on its raids in Houston, finding he had been freely walking the streets despite being ordered to be deported some time ago.
ICE Houston Director Bret Bradford said the migrant has a homicide conviction in Colombia and was sentenced to 21 years there, but slipped into the US illegally in February 2024.
He had been given a court date for an immigration hearing and released at the time, but like many illegal immigrants let in under the Biden administration, he merely didn’t show up.
Bradford said they tracked down the killer as he was ordered to be removed by an immigration judge in the US, and praised his arrest as a victory for Trump’s policies.
‘The biggest thing for me is public safety,’ he said.
The outlet reported that among the 422 illegal immigrants who were arrested in the Houston raids, 262 have criminal convictions, 34 have pending convictions, and 126 have other immigration violations.
The Colombian national who spent 21 years in prison for murder was far from the only unsavory character rounded up in the ICE raids.
Another detained in the Houston crackdown was a 72-year-old from Mexico who had convictions for homicide, robbery, shoplifting and assault, yet who had remained in the US following a deportation order issued in 2018.
During the raids, Hector Castillo-Garcia, 40, was captured as he tried to flee ICE agents in his car and then on foot – and was found to have been convicted of a slew of charges in the US.
This included arson, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and driving while intoxicated, but he had remained in Houston despite being twice deported in the past.
In total, there were 24 individuals with aggravated assault convictions among the 422 detained migrants in Houston, as well as 48 with DUIs, 37 with narcotics offenses, 21 with resisting arrest, and five with sexual assaults against children and minors.
Bradford told Fox News that the criminals were tracked down thanks to the department’s analysts who identified top-priority illegal immigrants who already own rap sheets.
‘They are doing the database research to get the worst of the worst, the ones who have the most significant threat to public safety,’ Bradford said.
‘And 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.’
The raids come as reports suggest President Trump was underwhelmed by the number of illegal immigrants who have been rounded up and deported in his first months back in office.
Bradford said ICE will soon be stepping up its efforts to remove migrants by accelerating the process of those with final orders to be removed, who will be transferred to designated hubs before being flown home to their native countries.
He branded it a ‘hub and spoke’ system, which is intended to speed up the removal process.
‘We can arrest the individual this morning, process him this afternoon, and have him on a removal flight this evening, same day, saving taxpayer cost and just making it more efficient and expedited process to get these folks out of the country,’ he said.