Federal prosecutors file 450 border cases, Eagle Pass arrests included

Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Texas filed 450 new immigration and immigration-related criminal cases from June 12 through June 25, adding another heavy stretch to a border docket that reaches deep into Del Rio and Eagle Pass.

The cases matter in Val Verde County because the Del Rio Division is not a narrow courthouse district. It covers 7 counties, 13,149 square miles and a population of 158,423, inside a broader Western District that spans 68 counties, nearly 93,000 square miles, about 7.6 million people and roughly 660 miles of border with Mexico. When filings rise in that system, residents see it in the pace of federal court calendars, the amount of Border Patrol work moving through the pipeline and the steady pressure on detention and transport.

Several of the cases highlighted this week came from arrests near Eagle Pass. Jose Gilberto Padilla-Yepez, a Mexican national and convicted felon, was charged with illegal re-entry after, prosecutors said, being deported four times and last removed in August 2022. His record includes a 1991 homicide conviction, three burglary convictions in Dallas, a theft conviction in Nebraska and convictions in Arizona for robbery, assault, sexual assault, burglary and kidnapping. Juan Antonio Gonzalez Escamilla was also arrested near Eagle Pass and charged with illegal re-entry after a prior conviction for the same offense and six deportations.

The roundup also named Martin Flores-Romero, Pedro Euceda-Aguero, Francisco Javier Perez-Solis and Jose Humberto Gonzalez Calderon, each tied to separate enforcement actions. Together, the cases show how the local federal docket continues to mix repeat immigration violations with criminal histories that prosecutors view as public-safety concerns.

The 450-case total followed 254 new immigration and immigration-related criminal cases filed from June 5 through June 11. Earlier in the spring, the district filed 350 cases from May 22 through May 28 and 297 from May 29 through June 4. That sequence points to a consistently busy filing pace, not a one-off burst.

Del Rio has been especially active inside that trend. In one recent week, 172 of nearly 300 new immigration cases were filed in Del Rio, including a repeat illegal-reentry defendant who had been deported seven times and another defendant with multiple DUI and domestic-battery-related convictions. For a courthouse that serves the border corridor through Val Verde County, those numbers show a system that is still processing a high-volume stream of immigration and criminal matters every week.

In 2025, the Western District of Texas prosecuted 11,542 border security cases and defended 652 civil immigration cases, a year-end benchmark that shows how large the federal border workload remained before this summer’s filings.