ICE says Harlingen field office arrests 238 in one-day South Texas operation

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday that its Harlingen, Texas, field office, working with law enforcement partners, arrested 238 people in a single-day operation June 18 — a record for targeted arrests in the Rio Grande Valley, the agency said.

ICE said the arrests included people with convictions for attempted kidnapping, sexual battery and drug possession. The agency identified one arrestee as Manuel Morales-Geronimo, a Mexican national and alleged Paisas gang member who it said had prior convictions including assault causing bodily injury, possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana, driving while intoxicated, illegal entry and three counts of illegal reentry.

ICE said another arrestee, Jose Alfredo Castillo-Mendoza, a Mexican national, previously had been convicted of attempted kidnapping, sexual battery and illegal reentry. The agency says the arrests marked the highest number of targeted arrests in a single day for Enforcement and Removal Operations Harlingen.

“The ICE mission continues to focus on enhancing public safety and restoring integrity to our nation’s immigration system,” ICE Harlingen Field Office Director Juan Agudelo said in a statement. “We will stop at nothing to keep our American communities safe by removing one criminal illegal alien at a time,” he added, the agency said.

The announcement came the same day President Donald Trump pushed back on a reported Department of Homeland Security move to pause most ICE traffic stops. In a social media post, Trump wrote, “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” He added that the DHS policy shift would be “playing right into the criminal’s [sic] hands,” according to the post. Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report.

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