DHS cites Guilford County assault conviction in removal case

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security cited Rafael Flores-Aguilar, an El Salvador national convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in Guilford County, as it described a removal case built around a local violent-crime conviction. The case lands in a county that state data say had 556,684 residents and 2,549 violent crimes in 2023.

Guilford County’s 2025 Violence Profile from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety puts Greensboro at the center of that picture. The city is the county’s largest, with 302,094 residents, and the county recorded 41,617 total crimes in 2023. The profile says violent crime rose 1% over the past year, with 463 violent crimes per 100,000 people in Guilford County compared with 312 statewide. It also lists Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro as the closest trauma center.

DHS has folded Flores-Aguilar’s case into a recurring enforcement message it has used several times this year. On Sept. 25, 2025, the department said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested criminal illegal aliens convicted of sexual conduct with a minor, drug charges, DUI and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. DHS then repeated the same public-safety framing in a Jan. 21, 2026 roundup and again on July 20, 2026, under its “Worst of the Worst” branding.

For Guilford County, the immediate significance is local rather than abstract. A conviction in county court has become part of a federal removal file, and DHS is using that record to show the kind of offense it wants to put at the front of its enforcement messaging. In a place where Greensboro anchors the region and violent crime remains above the statewide rate, the Flores-Aguilar case puts a familiar local record into a federal immigration context that county residents can see attached to their own courts and public-safety numbers.