{"id":390972,"date":"2025-11-19T23:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390972\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T23:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:49:12","slug":"2-men-charged-and-connected-to-federal-raid-on-north-side-appear-in-san-antonio-courtroom-doj-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390972\/","title":{"rendered":"2 men charged and connected to federal raid on North Side appear in San Antonio courtroom, DOJ says"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO<\/strong> \u2013 Two men charged in connection with a North Side raid made their first appearance on Wednesday inside a federal courtroom in San Antonio, according to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

Marcos Contreras-Max and Edwin Javier Chinchilla-Lopez, who are both from Honduras, were taken into custody by ICE agents during the operation on Nov. 16<\/a>, records obtained on Tuesday showed.<\/p>\n

After their arrests, the DOJ said Contreras-Max and Chinchilla-Lopez were transported to the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas, before they returned for their Wednesday court appearances in San Antonio. <\/p>\n

Upon their processing in Pearsall, investigators learned that Contreras-Max and Chinchilla-Lopez were in the United States illegally and were subsequently removed from the country in August 2023 and March 2025, respectively. <\/p>\n

Both men have been charged with illegal re-entry into the United States. <\/p>\n

If convicted, they would each face up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A DOJ spokesperson said a federal district court judge will ultimately \u201cdetermine any sentence.\u201d <\/p>\n

Earlier this week, officials said the raid was intended to disrupt the activities of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. However, court records obtained by KSAT Investigates<\/a> did not provide any evidence linking Contreras-Max or Chinchilla-Lopez to the gang.<\/p>\n

The Wednesday news release from the DOJ did not explicitly describe Contreras-Max and Chinchilla-Lopez as having clear ties to the gang, either. <\/p>\n

>> <\/b>What we know about the federal raid on the North Side: Tren de Aragua link, new task force, 140+ detained<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

In all, more than 140 immigrants were taken into custody following the multiple-agency operation<\/a> near Basse Road and San Pedro Avenue. <\/p>\n

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations field offices in San Antonio confirmed the arrests<\/a> in a news release on Monday. Officials said the arrests were the result of an operation from the newly established regional Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF-South Texas).<\/p>\n

\u201cDisrupting Tren de Aragua (TdA) criminal presence in San Antonio, Texas on November 16, 2025,\u201d was listed as a \u201crecent highlight\u201d for HSTF-South Texas, according to the release.<\/p>\n

WATCH BELOW: Protesters rally after more than 140 immigrants taken into custody<\/b><\/p>\n

The immigrants, who are from Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico and other South American countries, were taken into ICE custody. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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,\u201d the news release states.<\/p>\n

The news release states HSTF-South Texas investigates \u201csophisticated cartels, foreign terrorist organizations, and transnational gangs whose list of crimes include homicide, kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion, smuggling drugs across our borders, and money laundering.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a post on X from Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the raid was tied to a sex and human trafficking organization from Tren de Aragua.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 200 illegal immigrants were apprehended. More of this to come,\u201d Abbott said in a repost, which included a clipped video from KSAT\u2019s newscast.<\/p>\n

During a stop in San Antonio on Tuesday, Abbott did not take questions from reporters.<\/p>\n

More coverage of this story on KSAT: <\/b><\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Two men charged in connection with a North Side raid made their first appearance on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":390973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,12783,87849,409,31872,11628,186024,7202,7203,7725,358,158994,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-390972","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fbi","10":"tag-hsi","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-ksat-investigates","13":"tag-north-side","14":"tag-pearsall","15":"tag-san-antonio","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-sapd","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-tren-de-aragua","20":"tag-tx","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115579044781886599","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}