Texas police arrested an illegal migrant on drunk driving charges and soon realized he was an MS-13 gang member wanted for homicide in his home country.
Law enforcement in Harris County, Texas, arrested Alexis Bladimir Canizales Romero, a 27-year-old Salvadoran national, earlier this year for driving while intoxicated, according to a press release from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). An immigration check confirmed Canizales was living in the United States unlawfully and was wanted for aggravated homicide, femicide and “unlawfully association” in El Salvador.
Deportation officers lodged an immigration detainer for the Salvadoran national and finally repatriated him to his home country on Friday, ICE confirmed.
“This foreign fugitive and MS-13 gang member illegally entered the United States on multiple occasions to avoid prosecution in his home country of El Salvador for aggravated femicide, aggravated homicide and unlawful association,” Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston acting field office director Gabriel Martinez said in a statement.
“Thanks to the strong relationship we have with local law enforcement partners and the due diligence of our immigration officers, we were able to successfully connect him to these alleged crimes and repatriate him to El Salvador to face justice,” Martinez continued.
Canizales first unlawfully crossed into the U.S. in March 2020 near Hidalgo, Texas, and was immediately apprehended and expelled by Border Patrol under Title 42, according to ICE. At an unknown date and time, he illegally entered the U.S. again, making him an unknown “gotaway”.
Federal immigration authorities had no other encounter with Canizales until his arrest for driving under the influence in Harris County, Texas, according to the agency. Texas authorities — unlike in sanctuary cities or states that prohibit cooperation — complied with ICE detainer and quickly transferred him into the agency’s custody
An immigration judge with the Department of Justice ordered Canizales to be removed from the U.S. on July 5, ICE confirmed. Deportation officers flew Canizales on a charter flight coordinated by ICE’s Air Operation Unit to San Salvador, where he was turned over to Salvadoran law enforcement.
Canizales is one of the countless “unknown gotaways” who enter the country illegally and undetected by federal immigration authorities. Around two million known gotaways have entered the U.S. since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration, a congressional source confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation earlier this year.
More than seven million migrants have illegally crossed the U.S. southern border since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration began, according to the latest Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. Those individuals include hundreds of MS-13 gang members, like Canizales.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 4 into law in 2017, which requires local law enforcement officials to cooperate with deportation officers and to honor ICE detainers.
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