U.S. Border Patrol: Increasing Numbers Of Sex Offenders Are Illegally Crossing The Border


Agents from the U.S. Border Patrol are reporting that a rising number of convicted sex offenders are attempting to enter the country illegally, KRGV (Rio Grande Valley) is reporting.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector, which includes the area from Rio Grande City to Brownsville, as well as the city of Corpus Christi, reports that 144 sex offenders illegally crossed the border just in the past five months in that sector alone; that’s up from 93 for the same period last year.

The Border Patrol has a variety of tools at its disposal to identify detainees who have committed crimes in their countries of origin or elsewhere, according to Fox News. Fingerprint scans, retinal scans, and facial recognition software can all match detainees to worldwide criminal databases.

According to Breitbart, the Border Patrol routinely catches and detains a wide variety of attempted illegal boarder-crossers who have committed violent offenses. Illegal handgun possession, gang affiliations, drug offenders, and people with armed robbery convictions are just some of the types of criminals apprehended just in the Tucson Sector.

But most troubling for the Rio Grande Valley Sector are the convicted sex offenders making it across the border.

  • In December 2014, a woman with a 2009 child sex assault conviction in El Salvador was apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, along with three Mexicans with sex offense convictions.
  • In February of this year, seven sex offenders sex offenders were captured in sting operations near McAllen, Harlingen, Falfurrias and Kingsville.
  • On March 4, 35-year-old José Margarito Rivera-Mendez was caught illegally crossing the border. Mendez had been convicted in 2003 for indecency with a child in North Carolina, had served a prison sentence, and then had been deported back to Mexico.

Del Rio Sector Chief Rodolfo Karisch said that the safety of Americans is his agency’s top priority.

“Our agents are committed to keeping the country safe. Apprehending criminals previously convicted of felonies, as they attempt to enter the United State illegally, is one of the many ways we accomplish our mission.”

The rise in the number of sex offenders crossing the border illegally comes at a time when the United States deals with a worsening illegal immigration problem, and a showdown in Washington over how to deal with the problem. Republicans in Congress had attempted to stall a proposal by President Obama to give amnesty to some five million illegal immigrants already in the country, but ultimately that plan failed, according to this Inquisitr report.

Border Patrol agents admit that they do not know why more and more sex offenders are attempting to cross the border.

[Image courtesy of: Getty Images/John Moore]

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