From responding to the New Orleans terror attack on the first day of the year to enduring the longest federal government shutdown in history, the men and women of FBI Houston steadfastly protected communities along the Texas Gulf Coast throughout 2025.
In total, FBI Houston made more than 800 arrests, helped secure over 110 convictions, and worked investigations leading to more than 230 indictments. Our Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force identified, located, or rescued more than 200 child victims and arrested over 286 child predators and human traffickers. Alongside law enforcement partners, we seized over 600 kilos of narcotics, including cocaine, fentanyl, and meth. Our immigration enforcement operations resulted in the detention of more than 430 foreign nationals illegally residing in Texas, including 12 subjects of FBI cases.
Here are a few of FBI Houston’s investigative highlights from 2025:
Violent Crime
- FBI Houston dismantled and disrupted leadership and command structures of transnational gangs and narco-terrorist organizations. In coordination with the Houston Police Department, Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and other Texas law enforcement partners, three FBI Houston subjects are currently featured on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list:
- Yulan Archaga Carias – head of MS-13 in Honduras
- Wilver Villegas-Palomino – leader of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN)
- Giovanni Mosquera Serrano – senior leader of Tren de Aragua (TdA)
- FBI Houston co-founded Houston’s inaugural Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations operating in Southeast Texas.
- Our office launched the “Houston Most Wanted” fugitives list featuring violent criminals wanted by local, state, and federal law enforcement. Within six months, six fugitives on this list have been captured.
- Operation Summer Heat resulted in 64 arrests, the seizure of 65 firearms and 339 machine gun conversion devices, over 100 kilograms of narcotics, and more than $600,000 in drug proceeds.
- A six-year, multi-agency investigation resulted in federal RICO charges against 14 members of the Bandidos outlaw motorcycle gang who were engaged in a violent turf war with rival motorcycle gangs.
- FBI Beaumont agents helped secure a 30-year sentence for an MS-13 leader who executed two rival gang associates inside a Beaumont prison in 2022. The murders resulted in a week-long nationwide lockdown of federal inmates around the country.
- A 79-year-old previously convicted kidnapper was sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison after committing his second kidnapping of a local Beaumont, TX attorney in the summer of 2024.
Counterintelligence and Cyber
- FBI Houston agents and Houston police officers arrested alleged Chinese spy Liren Lai for carrying out clandestine intelligence operations targeting U.S. Navy personnel for recruitment on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).
- Less than a week later, Xu Zewei, a suspected MSS hacker, was arrested by FBI Houston agents and Italian police on an airport runway in Milan, Italy. Zewei is one of the first hackers linked to China’s largest and most active spy agency to be captured by the FBI.
- Estonian national Andrey Shevlyakov was extradited to the United States by FBI Houston agents to face federal charges. He’s accused of deliberately circumventing sanctions by illegally transporting microelectronics and high-tech products to Russia from the U.S. through shell companies.
Counterterrorism
- Abdulrahman Mohammed Alqaysi will spend the next 12 years in prison thanks to an FBI Houston investigation. Alqaysi, a legal permanent resident of Richmond, Texas, educated ISIS members on hacking, developed logos for the terrorist organization’s media arm, and used stolen credit card information to create fraudulent identity documents for ISIS supporters.
- Adrian Alberto Cano Gomez, an alleged member of the Colombian narco-terrorist organization ELN, was extradited by FBI Houston and DEA Houston agents to Texas on federal narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.
- The new designation of TdA as a foreign terrorist organization allowed FBI Houston’s Safe Streets Task Force to bring some of the first U.S. terrorism-related charges against Jose Enrique Martinez Flores, a high-ranking member of TdA currently in police custody in Colombia and facing extradition to the U.S.
Civil Rights and Public Corruption
- FBI Houston agents arrested two people for the November 2023 firebombing of a Buddhist temple in New Caney, Texas.
- Brian Busby, the former Chief Operating Officer for the Houston Independent School District (HISD), and Anthony Hutchison, an HISD contractor, were found guilty on 33 federal charges in a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme.
- FBI Houston’s public corruption squad coordinated with federal prosecutors to make sure former Immigrations and Customs Enforcement deportation officer Christopher Toral will remain behind bars for 5 years after he transported nearly $700,000 of what he believed to be drug proceeds.