Federal agents deported five illegal immigrants with criminal records ranging from child sexual abuse to repeated drunk driving, and one of them had already been removed from the country six times before.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out the deportations late last month, removing nationals of Mexico, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jamaica, and Guatemala who had racked up convictions for violent crimes, sexual offenses, and repeat alcohol-related offenses, Breitbart News reported. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin framed the operation as a direct fulfillment of President Trump's enforcement mandate.
The cases lay bare a pattern that has frustrated border hawks for years: federal immigration judges issue deportation orders, and the people subject to those orders stay in the country, sometimes for decades, committing new crimes along the way.
The most glaring case belongs to Miguel Baltazar-Bernal, a Mexican national who had already been deported from the United States six times before ICE removed him again. A federal immigration judge first ordered him deported in 1995, more than thirty years ago.
In the intervening years, Baltazar-Bernal was convicted of sexual intercourse with a minor, corporal injury on a spouse, felon in possession of a firearm, possession of marijuana for sale, and illegal entry. Each conviction represents a separate failure to keep him out of the country after a judge said he had to go.
How a man ordered deported in 1995 managed to re-enter the country at least six times, accumulating felony convictions each time, is a question the Step 1 material does not answer. But the timeline speaks for itself.
Omer Karahodzic, a Bosnian national, was ordered deported by a federal immigration judge in July 2025. His criminal record includes four counts of third-degree assault on a corrections employee, three counts of wanton endangerment, reckless conduct that puts others at serious risk of harm, three drunk-driving convictions, three counts of public intoxication, and a marijuana possession conviction.
He was also arrested for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, though the source material does not specify whether those charges resulted in convictions. The volume alone, four assaults on a corrections officer, three DUIs, paints a picture of an individual who posed a persistent danger to the communities around him.
That a federal judge did not order Karahodzic removed until July 2025, despite the length of his rap sheet, raises its own uncomfortable questions about how long the immigration court system takes to act. A recent Fifth Circuit ruling limiting ICE detention powers has only added legal obstacles to the enforcement pipeline.
Altiman Peterkin, a Jamaican national, arrived in the United States in November 2014 as a lawful immigrant. By February 2015, barely three months later, he had overstayed his visa.
He remained in the country for more than eleven years after that. During that time, he was convicted of assault and battery on a family member. He was also arrested for rape and for threatening to commit murder. Whether those arrests led to convictions is not stated in available reporting.
A federal immigration judge did not order Peterkin deported until July 2026. ICE carried out the removal weeks later. The gap between his visa expiration in early 2015 and his deportation order in mid-2026 spans more than a decade, a decade during which he accumulated a domestic violence conviction and arrests for two of the most serious offenses in the criminal code.
Critics of the immigration enforcement system have long argued that delays like these put American families at risk. Conservative commentators, including Fox News host Tomi Lahren, have warned that stalled deportation timelines erode public trust in the entire system.
Teofilo Ramos-Ramos, a Guatemalan national, was convicted of false imprisonment by violence, menace, fraud, or deceit, a charge that describes holding someone against their will through force or deception. He was also convicted of drunk driving causing injury. A federal immigration judge ordered him deported in December 2022. ICE did not remove him until late August 2026, nearly four years later.
Cecilia Gonzalez-Chavez, a Mexican national, presents perhaps the most revealing case in the batch. A federal immigration judge ordered her deported in September 2023. Two months later, in November 2023, she illegally crossed the border, and was released into the U.S. interior. The reporting does not identify which agency or official authorized her release.
Gonzalez-Chavez had been convicted of aggravated assault and aggravated battery. She had a standing deportation order. And yet, after crossing the border illegally, someone let her go. The case echoes other high-profile episodes in which individuals with serious criminal records or deportation orders were released rather than detained, including a Minnesota case in which the Walz pardon board cleared a convicted child sex offender who was facing deportation.
DHS Secretary Mullin used the deportations to make a broader political case for the administration's enforcement posture. In a statement, he said:
"Last week, the patriots of ICE deported more illegal aliens, including pedophiles, drunk drivers, and violent assailants."
Mullin added that the operations reflect a clear public consensus.
"Eighty percent of the American people support deporting criminal illegal aliens. Every day, DHS is delivering on President Trump's mandate from the American people to deport illegal aliens and make America safe again."
Mullin did not cite a specific poll or methodology for the 80 percent figure. But the political ground beneath him is solid: polling on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records has consistently shown broad bipartisan support, and the cases ICE highlighted make the policy argument in concrete terms.
The administration's enforcement push has also extended beyond conventional deportation cases. The DOJ recently filed the first-ever case in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, seeking to deport an Afghan woman tied to an Election Day 2024 plot. And ICE has withheld FOIA records on Rep. Ilhan Omar, citing active enforcement proceedings, a signal that the agency's reach now extends to politically sensitive territory.
Taken together, the five deportations tell a story less about ICE's current success than about the system's long-running failures. Baltazar-Bernal had a deportation order for thirty-one years. Ramos-Ramos waited nearly four years after his order. Peterkin overstayed his visa and lived in the country for over a decade before a judge acted. Gonzalez-Chavez was caught crossing the border illegally two months after being ordered deported, and was released anyway.
These are not ambiguous cases. They involve convictions for sex crimes against a minor, spousal abuse, assault on law enforcement, drunk driving that injured someone, and aggravated battery. The deportation orders were issued by federal immigration judges. The law was clear. Enforcement was not.
The fact that ICE is now executing these removals is worth noting. But so is the fact that it took this long. Every year one of these individuals spent in the country after a judge ordered them out was a year American communities bore the risk that the system was supposed to eliminate.
When a man with six prior deportations and a child sex crime conviction can keep coming back, the problem is not the law on the books. It is the will to enforce it, and the consequences for those who chose not to.
