Two illegal immigrants from Honduras were arrested in a Genesee County child sex sting operation last week, according to Sheriff Chris Swanson.
Swanson carried out the two-day operation with the help of the Genesee Human Oppression Strike Team and Chris Hansen, host of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, WNEM reported.
Over the two days, the GHOST team nabbed four men who attempted to meet up with the intention of exploiting a child, including two illegal immigrants from Honduras, one from Lapeer and another from Utica.
“All four of them, if it wasn’t GHOST there on the other side of the door, it would have been a real victim,” Swanson told the news site.
The sting operation involved a decoy pretending to be a child online, eventually arranging to meet at a home. One of the men allegedly chatted with the decoy for over five hours, and repeatedly scoped out the house before his arrest, the sheriff said.
Two of the suspects are married with children, including the suspect who chatted for five hours, whose wife is a teacher with a newborn at home. Another suspect was a 25-year-old student who shared specifics on how he wanted to exploit the decoy, WNEM reports.
Swanson and Hansen noted other suspects discussed meeting up with the decoy, as well, but never did.
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“Parents, you have to have this discussion with your children,” Hansen said. “You have to make them comfortable so they can come to you and say look, this happened, it made me nervous, it made me anxious, and then call Sheriff Swanson or any other law enforcement agency in your community.”
The arrests are only the most recent in Michigan involving illegal immigrants and human trafficking, or sex crimes against children.
A Chinese national was charged with multiple felonies earlier this month after a large-scale sting operation the month prior showed she helped operate human trafficking and commercial sex operations at illicit massage parlors in Wayne County.
Huazi Piao, the 60-year-old woman from China, was among several non-citizens and illegal immigrants involved in what authorities alleged was one of Michigan’s largest sex trafficking rings.
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Others involved included 45-year-old Chinese national Jingyu Jin, Oumar Lougue, a 53-year-old non-citizen from West Africa, and 59-year-old illegal immigrant Ming Li, according to prosecutors.
Illegal immigrants have also been arrested over the last year for multiple sex assaults in Ann Arbor, soliciting sex from minors in Shiawassee County, sexual conduct with a 16-year-old girl in Livingston County, and breaking into a home in Sturgis to molest two girls under the age of 13.
On Monday, illegal immigrants and immigration activists protested in Grand Rapids, the site of two murders committed by illegal immigrants in as many years, to demand sanctuary protections from President Donald Trump’s promised deportations.
Trump was sworn in as the 47th POTUS the same day, and immediately signed executive orders to reverse several Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies, reinstate his Remain in Mexico policy and revive border wall construction.
Trump also shut down a Biden-era app for incoming migrants, and moved to end birthright citizenship in some cases, The Associated Press reports.
In addition, Trump vowed to use the “full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement” to crack down on cartels he designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted. And we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech. “We will reinstate my remain in Mexico policy. I will end the practice of catch and release. And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
Trump and his pick to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, former border agent Tom Homan, said the “well-targeted, planned” deportations will focus on “public safety threats and national security threats first,” according to NPR.
Data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement released in September showed more than 662,000 illegal immigrants on the agency’s docket who have criminal convictions or charges pending.
Those criminals, the vast majority free to roam the U.S., include 13,099 convicted murderers, 15,811 convicted of sexual assaults, 162,231 convicted of assault, 56,533 with dangerous drug convictions, 5,797 convicted of fraud, 18,234 convicted of larceny, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 13,423 with weapons convictions 10,031 convicted of robbery, 9,461 with non-assaultive sexual convictions, 2,521 kidnappers, and 217 convicted of extortion.