President Trump’s border and interior enforcement machine just chalked up its biggest win in the Houston region this year. In a concentrated, weeklong sweep, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 822 illegal aliens across southeast Texas—netting transnational gang members, convicted murderers, habitual child predators, and foreign fugitives who slipped into the country during the Biden border free-for-all.

This wasn’t random. It was a targeted public-safety surge aimed squarely at the “worst of the worst.” ICE says five gang members, seven child sex offenders, and three aliens with homicide convictions were among those taken off the streets. Roughly 330 of the arrestees had already been ordered removed by immigration courts—and did not leave. About 112 had been deported before and criminally re-entered anyway. That revolving door just slammed shut.

One name tells the story. Alejandro Perez Miramontes, a 54-year-old Mexican national, had been deported a staggering 12 times. His rap sheet reads like a warning label: eight convictions for illegal re-entry, four for illegal entry, and separate convictions for robbery, larceny, burglary, trespass, and evading arrest. Under Trump’s DHS, that ends—permanently.

Then there are the predators. ICE officers picked up William Alexander Telles Amaya of El Salvador, a serial child sex offender with multiple convictions, including aggravated sexual assault of a child. They also arrested Francisco Eduardo Bonilla, convicted earlier this year of sexual indecency with a minor in Harris County, and Jorge Eliseo Torres-Soto, convicted of sexual assault of a child in 2024. These aren’t “asylum seekers.” They’re exactly who communities fear most.

The list goes on. Agents cuffed Manuel Ivan Castillo Estrada—a three-time deportee with convictions for alien smuggling and sexually assaulting a minor. They grabbed Zimbabwe national Lloyd Tinashe Hwehwe, whose record includes intoxication manslaughter and repeat DWIs, and who came back after removal to endanger Texans again. They nabbed Carlos Vega-Ramirez, another deported child sex offender with a trail of felonies that includes enticing a minor, forgery, and fleeing police.

And they found fugitives. Hemerlindo Antonio Ascencio-Merino, wanted in El Salvador for aggravated homicide, tried to hide in the U.S. instead of facing justice back home. Not anymore. ICE also took down MS-13 gang member Cruz Leandro Martinez Leiva, convicted of robbery and armed carjacking. These are precisely the people the left’s sanctuary politics and “de-emphasized” prosecutions let slip through the cracks.

Houston’s ICE leadership didn’t mince words. After four years of border chaos, violent foreign criminals embedded themselves in the metro and “wreaked havoc” in local neighborhoods. That’s what happens when Democrats treat enforcement like a thought crime and criminals like victims. Trump’s directive is the opposite: find them, arrest them, remove them.

The scale of this operation matters. It signals that the handcuffs are off ICE—not the criminals. For too long, officers were told to look the other way unless a case fit some bureaucratic flowchart. Now they’re hunting danger, not paperwork. That’s why this sweep prioritized repeat offenders, prior-order absconders, and those who dared to re-enter after deportation. If you keep coming back to prey on Americans, expect a federal cell—and a one-way ticket out.

There’s another message here, and it’s aimed at the cartels and coyotes profiting off human misery. Texas is not a soft target. With state partners and federal muscle working in tandem, the cost of doing business just spiked. Every arrest ripples outward—disrupting crews, drying up street-level distribution, and making it harder for fugitives to disappear in our communities.

Critics will clutch pearls about “sweeps.” Spare us. Families care about safety, not slogans. Ask the parents who no longer have to check Megan’s Law every week to see if a deported child molester returned to their zip code. Ask the widow who doesn’t have to share a road with a drunk-driving killer who slipped back in after removal. This is what enforcement looks like when Washington remembers who it serves.

The bottom line voters will feel? Fewer predators on trains and buses. Fewer gang shooters on corners. Fewer drunk killers behind the wheel. And a clear signal to every repeat offender who thought Biden’s border meant America was a consequence-free zone: those days are over.

This is what restoring public safety actually looks like—names, cuffs, convictions, removals. Keep it going.