News Releases and Statements

On Sept. 27, Jose Froylan Garcia Melendez was admitted to the U.S. using a nonimmigrant H2-B visa. The day after his admission, the Government of Mexico notified ICE that he was the suspect in a double homicide in the city of Victoria in Tamaulipas, Mexico.

Betancourt entered the U.S. illegally near San Ysidro, California, in 1991. He was convicted of aggravated manslaughter in 1997 in New Jersey and sentenced to 25 years of incarceration.

Nedjo Milosevic, 53, a native of the former Yugoslavia, who, according to the Department of Justice’s complaint, was a member of one of the military units responsible for the Srebrenica massacre – the largest mass atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust.

HSI New York identified Sharafat Ali Khan, 33, as the Brazilian-based facilitator of the alien smuggling organization.

On Monday, December 17th, an ICE ERO IAO flight departed El Paso, Texas carrying 36 Cambodian nationals, of whom 34 are criminals, to their home country of Cambodia in accordance with their final orders of removal.

Xiangyu Zhang, 22, a resident of La Marque, Texas, illegally remained in the United States two years after his temporary visa expired.  He came to law enforcement’s attention in July 2018 when he threatened to use firearms to kill school children during an internet chat session on the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Crisis Line.  Zhang is a not a U.S. veteran.

On Feb. 5, 2018, Naif Abdulaziz M. Alfallaj, 35, a citizen of Saudi Arabia, was taken into custody by the FBI without incident, based on a criminal complaint signed in the Western District of Oklahoma. According to the complaint, the FBI found 15 of Alfallaj’s fingerprints on an application to an al Qaeda training camp, known as al Farooq, which was one of al Qaeda’s key training sites in Afghanistan.

Of the 63 arrested, 47 had criminal convictions. Of the 16 non-criminal arrests, two had outstanding orders of removal, and four had been previously removed. Three women and 60 men were arrested.

Twelve alleged members of the La Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, street gang were indicted by a Queens County grand jury Tuesday on various charges including attempted murder and conspiracy, in addition to drug and weapons charges. 

According to the indictment filed this afternoon in U.S. District Court, members of the hacking conspiracy broke into computer systems used by Hollywood film production companies and stole digital files, including feature films, trailers, television series episodes and audio tracks.

On Dec. 11, James Randall Lee Ross, aka “Silver”, 45, became the latest defendant to be sentenced as a result of the investigation when he was ordered by U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, to serve 292 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release.

In fiscal year 2018, HSI opened 6,848 worksite investigations compared to 1,691 in FY17; initiated 5,981 I-9 audits compared to 1,360; and made 779 criminal and 1,525 administrative worksite-related arrests compared to 139 and 172, respectively; all of these categories surged by 300 to 750 percent over the previous fiscal year.

An Tso Sun, 18, also known as “Edward Sun,” a Taiwanese exchange student, came to the United States in Aug. 26, 2017, on an F-1 visa to be a student at a high school in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. While attending school, he resided with a host family in Upper Darby.

U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow sentenced Keith Edward Taylor, age 33, of Kingsville, Maryland, today to 27 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release for production of child pornography.  There is no parole in the federal system. 

RACZ entered the United States as a visitor on June 10, 2016, through Miami International Airport in Miami, FL. He overstayed his authorized admission of 90 days, under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP).

A former procurement officer of Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), pleaded guilty Monday for his role in a scheme to obstruct an investigation relating to bribes paid by the owner of U.S.-based companies to Venezuelan government officials in exchange for securing additional business with PDVSA and payment priority on outstanding invoices.

ERO deportation officers returned Jose Evaristo Linares-Castillo, 52, to Colombia via an ICE Air Operations Charter flight and transferred him into the custody of Colombian law enforcement authorities.

Four individuals in the country illegally who have Interpol warrants based on crimes they committed in their home countries were among 105 foreign nationals taken into custody during a five-day operation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week in New Jersey.

McAllister Towing & Transportation Company, Inc. (McAllister Towing) and its 13 subsidiaries operate a fleet of tugs, barges and ferries in all major East Coast ports of the United States, including but not limited to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, Port Everglades and San Juan.

Kenneth B. Hendricks, 77, of Cincinnati, was arrested by Manila-based HSI special agents alongside Filipino  authorities Tuesday evening in the Philippines, where he currently serves as a missionary priest.

Criminal histories of those arrested during the operation included charges and convictions for: Murder, Aggravated Identity Theft, Assault, Attempted Assault, Cocaine Possession, Cocaine Trafficking, Criminal, DUI and multiple other categories of crimes.