Operation Take Back America: Thousands of Illegal Aliens Criminally Charged Since March

With the southern border finally secured and illegal immigration at an all-time low, the Trump administration is cracking down on criminal aliens welcomed into the United States by the Biden administration, charging thousands with crimes including over 1,300 this month alone. Besides facing allegations of illegally reentering the country, many of those charged have felony convictions involving narcotics, firearms, and sexual offenses. It is part of the Trump administration’s Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative launched in March to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, eliminate drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect American communities from perpetrators of violent crime. Under the initiative the Department of Justice (DOJ) empowers prosecutors and law enforcement officials around the country to protect their communities from ongoing threats by charging the most serious, readily provable offenses.

Just a few months after its creation, the operation is proving to be quite effective with federal prosecutors in southwestern border districts charging over 6,000 illegal immigrants with crimes. In the last week of April federal prosecutors in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas charged nearly 1,000 defendants with criminal violations of U.S. immigration laws. More than half of the cases were handled in Texas where hundreds of the migrants charged for illegally reentering the U.S. had felony convictions for crimes involving drugs, firearms, and sexual offenses. Among them is a previously deported Mexican national with a federal drug trafficking conviction and a Honduran migrant convicted of aggravated kidnapping and sentenced to five years in prison. In Arizona 11 individuals had charges for smuggling illegal aliens and in California over 100 were charged with transportation of illegal immigrants for financial gain and importation of controlled substances as well as committing lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14.

In the first week of May alone, over 1,300 criminal aliens were charged under the initiative with Texas U.S. Attorneys again leading the way. The majority of the 608 cases filed by federal prosecutors in the Lone Star State that week also involved suspects with prior felony convictions for narcotics, firearms, sexual or violent offenses prior to immigration crimes. More than a dozen committed human smuggling crimes and at least two men from Venezuela—home of the deadly Tren de Aragua gang—got charged with illegally possessing a firearm. In Arizona two dozen individuals were charged with smuggling illegal immigrants and in California hundreds of criminal aliens were charged with human smuggling, assault on a federal officer, drug smuggling—including nearly 300 pounds of methamphetamine—burglary and forgery. The central district of California, which includes Los Angeles, has seen a 3,755% increase in illegal immigrants charged with reentering the United States after being deported since Trump took office in January. “The defendants charged were previously convicted of felonies before they were removed from the United States,” according to the DOJ.

This week the agency announced that 18 additional migrants were charged with various crimes including straw purchasing of firearms, bank robbery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm by an illegal alien and illegal reentry under Operation Take Back America. The perpetrators include a previously deported Mexican charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by an alien as well as illegal reentry into the U.S., two Honduran men charged with illegally possessing firearms and a Mexican man who has been deported three times charged with illegally reentering the U.S. Authorities are not just randomly plucking migrants off the streets as the left claims. They are strictly focusing on those with criminal histories. “Operation Take Back America will also include all efforts to target TdA [Tren de Aragua], MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the Northeast Cartel (Los Zetas), New Michoacan Family, United Cartels, the Gulf Cartel, and any other Cartel,” according to the memo that launched the initiative in early March.

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