U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed a Mexican citizen who had previously been deported eight times.
43-year-old Baltazar Pantoja Calderon had been convicted of numerous criminal offenses, ICE said, including kidnapping, driving while intoxicated, illegal entry, and resisting arrest.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said in a statement, “The complete lack of respect for our nation’s system of laws that this criminal alien has displayed over the past quarter of a century has in recent years, unfortunately, become more commonplace.”
“The law enforcement community in South Texas is united in our determination to restore sovereignty over our southern border and has banded together to remove these dangerous criminal aliens from our country to restore law and order in our communities,” Bradford said.
Similarly, a Mexican national who had previously been deported was arrested and charged with murder in Michigan last month. Authorities in Alpine Township, a northern suburb of Grand Rapids, charged Gilberto Hernandez-Mendez, 42, with eleven counts, including murder, attempted murder, and weapons offenses, following a February 22 shooting that left one woman dead and two others wounded.
Three previously deported illegal aliens were also recently arrested in Texas.
Nearly 19 million illegal immigrants are present in the United States, according to an estimation from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The organization estimated that 18.6 illegal immigrants are in the U.S., an 11% increase since a June 2023 estimate. The number also marks a 28.2% increase over the four years of the Biden administration.
