U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carry out an arrest as part of a nationwide enforcement sweep. Credit: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Federal agents took more than 140 migrants from Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico and other Latin American countries into custody Sunday following a raid near San Antonio’s Quarry Market, according to a statement from government officials.
The statement, released jointly by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, also trumpeted the creation of a new San Antonio-based Homeland Security Task Force dubbed HSTF-South Texas.
The task force will combat “transnational criminal organizations engaged in sophisticated criminal schemes, involving federal violations, both within the United States and beyond our borders,” the statement said.
The statement highlighted this weekend’s raid — carried out near the intersection of Basse Road and San Pedro Avenue — as one of HSTF-South Texas’ recent successes and stated that the operation disrupted a “criminal presence” by Tren de Aragua (TDA), an international gang based in Venezuela.
However, the statement offered no information about how many of those detained actually had ties to TDA or what charges, if any, have so far been filed against those arrested. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement employee listed as a media point-of-contact on the statement didn’t respond to the Current’s request for further comment.
The creation of HSTF-South Texas comes as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to enact what the president promised would be the largest mass-deportation effort in U.S. history.
While the White House has argued that it’s targeting the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders with the deportation sweeps, numbers show that the majority of those in ICE custody have no criminal record.
Around 71.5% of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention as of Sept. 27 of this year had no criminal convictions, according to federal records obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan data clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Many of the detainees with convictions only committed minor offenses, including traffic violations, TRAC’s data also shows.
Indeed, some recent San Antonio ICE arrests have targeted immigrants going through the asylum-seeking process as they showed up at scheduled court hearings.
The announcement that the San Antonio raid targeted TDA also comes as the U.S. has sent its biggest aircraft carrier into the Caribbean Sea amid mounting Trump plans to unleash the country’s armed forces as part of a purported effort to shut down drug gangs.
In its press statement, HSTF-South Texas said it also it also took part of two other victories over criminal operations late last month.
The feds brought money laundering charges against a father and son for funneling material support to a Mexican drug cartel and separately intercepted more than 500 firearms before they were smuggled into Mexico from the Laredo area, according to the statement.
“Through a unified effort, the HSTF-South Texas will serve as a model for protecting the homeland from evolving threats, safeguarding critical infrastructure, and enhancing national resilience,” the statement also said.
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