A majority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations have focused on perpetrators of violent crimes, officials say.
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts this term have focused on illegal immigrants with criminal histories.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made about 379,000 arrests from Jan. 20, 2025, through Jan. 20, 2026, and the administration has maintained that the majority involved those with criminal arrests or convictions.
Tricia McLaughlin, former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said last year that 70 percent of ICE arrests were of criminal illegal aliens who had been charged or convicted of a crime in the United States. According to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, last year’s arrests included more than 7,300 suspected gang members and 1,400 known or suspected terrorists.
In December, DHS launched its Worst of the Worst searchable database of criminal illegal immigrants taken off the streets. The database, which currently lists more than 30,800 entries, allows visitors to search for those arrested across all 50 states with criminal histories that include homicide, assault, rape, drug trafficking, crimes against children, assault, armed robbery, and others.
Here is a sampling of 10 violent criminal illegal immigrant arrests in 2025 and early 2026.
Indecency With a Child
On Feb. 18, 2025, ICE arrested Guatemalan national Sostenes Pérez-López in Brighton, Massachusetts.
According to a Boston Police report, a mother and her daughter encountered Pérez-López at a laundromat on Nov. 23, 2024.
The young girl was drawing at a table near the laundromat’s entrance when Pérez-López approached her. Later, the mother noticed her daughter with an unknown man and went to her, at which point Pérez-López spoke to her in Spanish.
“Your daughter is very pretty,” he said. “They are going to steal her.”
When asked who was going to steal her daughter, Pérez-López responded, “The dogs,” and left the laundromat.
The girl later told her mother that Pérez-López had inappropriately touched her.
Local human trafficking and sexual assault investigators obtained a photo of the man from the surveillance video inside the laundromat and identified Pérez-López as the suspect on Nov. 27.
Pérez-López went to a police station after he was identified and asked to speak with investigators, according to the police report. He told detectives he was at the laundromat that day and saw a girl he believed to be about 5 years old standing by herself.
He instructed the girl to come to him, then told police that he put his left arm around her waist, “pulled her closer to him,” and said, “Hola.”
Pérez-López was arrested and charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 on Nov. 28, 2024, according to ICE, which lodged an immigration detainer against him following his arrest.
The Boston Municipal Court, Brighton Division, arraigned Pérez-López on Nov. 29, 2024, but ignored the ICE detainer and released him on bail on Dec. 12, 2024.
Pérez-López was served with a notice to appear before a Department of Justice immigration judge following his February arrest, and he remains in ICE custody.
20 Sex Crimes
On April 1, 2025, ICE and federal partners operating in Lawrence, Massachusetts, arrested Ecuadoran national Gilberto Avila-Jara, whose criminal history includes more than 20 sex crimes against a minor.
Avila-Jara allegedly illegally entered the United States near San Ysidro, California, on Feb. 10, 1996, and was arrested on March 2, 1996, at Los Angeles International Airport, according to ICE.
Avila-Jara was removed from the country in July 1996, but later illegally reentered on an unknown date.
On Dec. 18, 2020, Avila-Jara was arraigned in Lawrence District Court for more than 20 offenses, including indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, rape of a child with force, and aggravated statutory rape of a child, according to ICE.
On that same day in December, ICE Boston lodged an immigration detainer against Avila-Jara with the Lawrence Police Department. However, the court refused to honor the detainer and released Avila-Jara on bail on March 17, 2021.
On April 22, 2021, the Essex County Superior Court arraigned Avila-Jara for six counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, eight counts of rape of a child with force, and eight counts of aggravated statutory rape of a child.
Murder and Assault
ICE arrested René Pop-Chub, a Guatemalan national who had pending charges for murder, second-degree assault, and reckless endangerment, in Hyattsville, Maryland, on April 12, 2025.
Pop-Chub was captured and subsequently removed by Border Patrol twice—once on June 13, 2013, in Falfurrias, Texas, and again on Dec. 11, 2017, in Cowlic, Arizona.
After illegally entering the United States for a third time, he was arrested on Aug. 19, 2024, by police in Maryland and charged with first-degree assault.
ICE lodged a detainer with the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections on Oct. 9, 2024, but it was ignored, DHS said.
On Oct. 31 of that year, the District Court for Prince George’s County forwarded the case to the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County for the currently pending charges.
However, the district court refused to honor ICE’s immigration detainer and released Pop-Chub on April 8, 2025. He was arrested by ICE four days later.
