West Texas leads U.S. in federal criminal prosecutions due to cartel-related activities

West Texas is currently leading the country in terms of federal criminal prosecutions, according to data from the Department of Justice and U.S. Courts reported by Border Report.

Concretely, over 13,300 cases were filed in the area between October 1, 2021 and September 30, 2023. The vast majority of them were filed in the Southern District, which includes border cities like Laredo and Brownsville, as well as large cities large Houston and Galveston.

Arrests of unlawful migrants and drug-trafficking activities explain most of the cases, a law enforcement official told the outlet. "When I look at districts along the border, the first thing I ask is, 'How many of those are immigration cases?' You will always get a lot of (illegal entry without inspection) and improper re-entry" by migrants," Víctor M. Manjarrez Junior told the outlet.

He said that cases would be even higher if Border Patrol had more resources to increase apprehensions of migrants in the area. "If you have a limited number of prosecutors and you can only do a certain number of cases every week, you have to prioritize your resources," he said.

At the national level, almost a third of the more than 66,000 criminal cases filed last year were immigration related. Over 14,000 of them were charges against foreigners who had been expelled from the country but entered again.

The Texas government has sought to take some of the matters into its own hands by releasing a list of the "10 most wanted illegal immigrants" in the state. The list was released earlier this month and three of them have already been arrested.

Two of them were communicated this week. The people in question were number one and three on the list. Víctor Hugo Chox González was the most wanted, as he was accused of aggravated sexual assault of a child, indecency with a child by sexual contact, failure to identify and give false/fictitious information and failure to identify as a fugitive.

The third one took place two weeks ago. He was Servando Trejo Duran Jr., 62, who was wanted for violating his parole in connection with his original crime, murder with a deadly weapon.

According to a release by the state's Department of Public Safety (DPS) he was taken into custody in Baytown. The outlet recalled that he has committed several crimes over 40 years and was deported in 2009.

However, he was again arrested in February 2023 by the Deer Park Police Department for tampering with a government record and released on bond. Weeks later, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles issued an arrest warrant for parole violation, the crime for which he was currently wanted.