U.S Marshals arrest over 7,000 fugitives nationwide

More than 7,000 of America’s most dangerous criminals are off the streets after a six-week fugitive round-up operation.

Some 180 of those arrests were made in El Paso.

The arrests were all part of the U.S. Marshals “Operation Violence Reduction 7.”

The operation targeted murderers, gang members, sex offenders and drug dealers.

Day in and day out, for the past six weeks deputy U.S. Marshals have been relentless
going to homes, businesses and even scouring the streets looking to arrest fugitives making our community unsafe.

ABC-7 was the only news crew to ride along with the U.S. Marshals the past two months .

At the break of dawn U.S. Marshals begin their day searching for El Paso’s most dangerous criminals.

Prepared to encounter armed felons they go from home to home using the element of surprise to capture fugitives on the run.

“We go after the worst of the worst each and every day. These that we arrested during this operation are even worse than those,” said United States Marshal for the Western District, Robert Almonte.

Almonte says the six-week operation was a success.

“Across the nation this operation resulted in 7,126 arrests,” said Almonte.

To give you an idea of how serious the criminals are, “519 were arrested for murder,” said Almonte.

In March El Paso U.S. Marshals arrested a woman in Central El Paso for parole violation and allegedly selling drugs on the streets.

A week later U.S Marshals raided a business looking for another parole violator who had a warrant for aggravated assault.

The suspect’s brother told the task force his brother wasn’t there. After a search they found the man they were looking for hiding in the back of the shop.

The suspect’s is brother was taken in for questioning. After being fingerprinted they found he was in the country illegally. He was deported.

Almonte said this is a 24-hour-a-day 7-day-a-week operation.

“We get information on a fugitive we can’t say, ‘We’ll check it out Monday’ well we’re going to go now because there might not be a tomorrow,” said Almonte.

Even after operation VR7 was over U.S. Marshals continued to arrest fugitives.

They arrested a wanted drug dealer and in the process they ended up arresting three other suspects.

“Each time we remove a dangerous fugitive from the streets we are preventing that fugitive we from committing other crimes,” said Almonte.

This was a national dangerous fugitive roundup and these raids and arrests do come at a price.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Josie Wells from Baton Rouge, Louisiana was killed during operation VR7.

Almonte tells ABC-7 they dedicated the operation and all the arrests to Deputy U.S. Marshal Wells.