NEW: FBI Arrests Top MS-13 Leader in Virginia; Bondi Blasts Reporter
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It’s amazing what one can find … when one is motivated to look.

Over the past month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has rounded up several people listed on their Ten Most Wanted list, as well as other high-profile fugitives, that appeared to be living in plain sight. That appears to describe the FBI’s latest capture, one of the top three leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha organized-crime ring in the US, otherwise known as MS-13. The FBI went full paramilitary in Virginia to get the as-yet unnamed 24-year-old, reportedly the top MS-13 leader for the entire East Coast:





U.S. authorities have captured the MS-13 top leader for the U.S. East Coast, the FBI announced on Thursday.

Officials captured the 24-year-old suspect in Woodbridge, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C. Authorities have yet to release the suspect’s name, but they say he is one of the top three leaders of the MS-13 gang in the U.S.

Woodbridge? The FBI didn’t have to go very far to make that arrest. 

This raises some questions about how long the man had lived in the DC suburbs, when the FBI knew about it, and what efforts were made before Trump took office to find him. Fox’s Spunt reports that the bureau had him under surveillance for a while, so it’s possible that the FBI watched him to catalog his criminal activity for enough time to roll up his network along with him. Nevertheless, the recent string of high-profile arrests and extraditions from other countries of long-wanted criminals hardly seems coincidental to the installation of a new administration.

So far, the Department of Justice hasn’t had much to say yet about the man they arrested. Donald Trump hailed the operation in two Truth Social posts this morning, but was also mum on the details. He did allude to a multi-agency task-force approach to the operation:





Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted a picture from the scene after the arrest:

Bondi led a press conference after the arrest and confirmed the general strokes of the reporting so far. Bondi hinted that the suspect will likely be deported back to El Salvador for imprisonment rather than face trial in the US:

Bondi pledged to keep making arrests until MS-13 and other transnational organized-crime syndicates are completely dismantled in the US. Bondi also declared that the renewed focus on law enforcement is making the country safer. And that applies to immigration enforcement as well, Bondi emphasized:





Bondi and Kash Patel have successfully reoriented the FBI toward law enforcement and away from politics in the first weeks of their term. The results speak well of the effort and focus, but on a more amusing note, so too does Bondi’s final response at the presser. One reporter tried to bring up the Signal fiasco for some reason, which has nothing to do with the DoJ and certainly nothing to do with the arrest of an MS-13 leader. Bondi slapped him into next week with her response:

Man, the Protection Racket Media sure seems desperate to talk about Signal, huh?





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