Texas Prosecutors File 261 Immigration Cases in One Week — Repeat Offenders Among Defendants
A Mexican national convicted of statutory rape and deported three times was arrested near Val Verde, Texas, in March. He is one of 261 individuals facing new immigration and criminal charges filed by federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas in just one week.
A Mexican national convicted of statutory rape and deported three times was arrested near Val Verde, Texas, in March. He is one of 261 individuals facing new immigration and criminal charges filed by federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas in just one week.
Jorge Guerrero-Martinez, a Mexican national, served five years for second-degree statutory rape in 2010 and 57 months for illegal re-entry in 2017. He was deported for the third time on March 13, 2026, after Missouri officials charged him for failing to register as a sex offender. Federal prosecutors now allege he has returned to the U.S. illegally once again.
Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas filed 261 new immigration and immigration-related criminal cases from April 3 to April 9, U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons announced. The defendants collectively have 19 DWI convictions, six controlled substance possession charges, two possession with intent to distribute cases, and one rape conviction among other serious offenses.
The enforcement surge targets individuals with documented patterns of illegal re-entry after prior deportations, not first-time asylum seekers. Enrique Eleuterio Lopez-Rocha, deported in May 2025, has a 2020 cocaine trafficking conviction and three DWI convictions. Samuel Castro, a U.S. citizen arrested in El Paso on April 6, allegedly operated a smuggling ring since 2023 and was convicted last October of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Repeat offender patterns dominate the case files. Arturo Castro Hernandez was removed twice previously and has three DWI convictions. Honorio Victorino-Rebollar faces his third illegal re-entry charge after his last removal in 2018. Adan Tolentino Guerrero, removed twice before, was convicted last year of fleeing police and his third DWI.
This prosecution surge falls under Operation Take Back America, launched early 2025 as a nationwide Justice Department initiative. The Western District alone has filed more than 12,000 immigration cases since January 20, 2025, as part of systematic prosecution of illegal re-entry as a federal crime.
Enforcement data reveals the scale of this shift. Immigration courts issued nearly 500,000 removal orders in fiscal year 2025, a 57 percent increase over the previous year, according to a White House statement. ICE arrests more than quadrupled from the end of the Biden administration to January 2026, UCLA researchers found. The asylum grant rate stands at 7 percent under the current administration.
The enforcement surge has overwhelmed court systems. More than 18,000 habeas petitions have been filed nationwide since January 2025, with the Western District leading the country with more than 1,300 cases in the last three months. Bond releases dropped from more than 2,400 per month to just 326 in March 2026, according to Mobile Pathways data.
A White House statement on April 10 framed the policy change starkly. "Since President Donald J. Trump returned to office, the United States has launched the most aggressive and successful immigration enforcement overhaul in modern history," the statement read. "After four years of Biden-era chaos turned immigration courts into de facto amnesty factories for unvetted illegals, the Trump Administration is remaking the broken system."
The enforcement philosophy treats illegal re-entry as a serious federal crime. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the elimination of bond hearings for most detained immigrants in Texas and Louisiana on February 6, 2026. U.S. Attorney Simmons's office now pursues detention without bond in most cases.
Graeme Blair, a UCLA professor and co-director of the Deportation Data Project, noted the national scope of the enforcement expansion. "The expansion is truly national," Blair stated in research released April 10. His team found that even at the peak of regional enforcement surges, those arrests accounted for only 15 percent of nationwide street arrests.
Senior Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas responded to Justice Department criticism of judicial pushback. "Then there are a lot of rogue judges," Briones told the Investigative Post on February 12. "Obviously we feel that we're correct, that's all I can say."
The 261 cases represent concrete criminal recidivism rather than abstract policy debate. With documented patterns of repeated illegal entry after prior deportations, these defendants illustrate what enforcement officials describe as the failure of previous policies to deter individuals with serious criminal histories from returning to the United States.