Children Among ‘More Than 140’ Detained by ICE & FBI in Multi-Agency Sweep in San Antonio

On Monday night, more than 100 area residents gathered a block or so from the site of an inter-agency raid that in a few short hours early morning Sunday swept up more than 140 people into federal detention. Few facts about the case have been released by the agencies involved, though we’re told in an FBI press release that the action was a response to concerns about gang activity and human trafficking.

That release also announced the formation of a regional multi-agency Homeland Security Task Force with a mission to combat “transnational criminal organizations.”

Details about Sunday’s raid specifically included:

Disrupting Tren de Aragua (TdA) criminal presence in San Antonio, Texas on November 16, 2025, which also resulted in the arrest of over 140 illegal aliens from Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico and other South American countries, who were taken into ICE custody. This operation would not have been possible without the support of the Texas Department of Public Safety, whose work on the underlying state case led to the search warrant executed during the operation.

However, hinging such sweeping justifications for mass detention on a Venezuelan gang merits skepticism, particularly considering the large number of peaceful, non-violent, and non-criminal detainees swept up in a national effort promising to target the “worst of the worst,” in President Trump’s words. Estimates hold that more than 70 percent of those grabbed by ICE have no criminal histories. Additionally, nearly 200 known U.S. citizens have also been being violently detained and held in facilities across the country.

In fact, the first charges brought out of this multi-agency raid involve two individuals on charges of “illegal reentry into the United States” only, KSAT reported. No details of alleged gang membership and no trafficking-related charges have surfaced.

Moreover, children were caught up in that sweep also who remain unaccounted for. It was a concern amplified in the Monday protest warning of Chele Fernandez, an organizer with the San Antonio chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, as captured in the video above.

“They detained nearly 200 people, including bystanders, vendors, laborers, and minors were present too,” Fernandez said. “This was an indiscriminate sweep. Not targeted arrests.”

The family of two boys, aged 15 and 16, told News4SA this week that both children were caught up in the raid after walking to the food trucks for late-night tacos. The family had come to the U.S. to escape the gang violence in their native Honduras, the parents said.

Human rights attorney Daniel Hatoum of the Texas Civil Rights Project called the sweep a “pretextual racist arrest.”

“When you look into who they arrested, they arrested folks from all over the map, from Mexico, from Central America. And they recognize that the reason they arrested them was immigration violations,” Hatoum told Deceleration at the protest.

“So what seems really obvious just from the way that they present it is that a lot of what they are talking about is mere pretense. That Tren de Aragua is mere pretense. They’re not even trying to hide that.”

Deceleration requested from the FBI the names of those detained, location of their detention, and any alleged charges against them, but has received no response.

U.S. Representatives Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar submitted a formal request for similar information of the heads of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice. Castro’s office, however, which shared the letter on Instagram, did not respond to multiple requests from Deceleration for comment.

Area residents gathered at the corner San Pedro Avenue and Basse Road made demands of their own while calling for an end to rising ICE violence. They marched in the crosswalk across this busy thoroughfare several times for increased visibility, with a banner reading: