CNN
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Federal law enforcement officers captured an alleged “major leader” of the MS-13 gang Thursday morning, President Donald Trump said on social media.
“Just captured a major leader of MS13,” he wrote. The alleged 24-year-old gang member, was arrested in the early hours of Thursday in Prince William County, Virginia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was present for the raid along with FBI Director Kash Patel, said in a news conference that the man was “the leader for the East Coast, one of the top three in the entire country, right here in Virginia, living half an hour outside of Washington, DC.”
“He is an illegal alien from El Salvador, and he will not be living in our country much longer,” Bondi said.
According to court documents unsealed Thursday afternoon in the Eastern District of Virginia, Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, a citizen of El Salvador was taken into custody Thursday on an outstanding administrative immigration warrant. He was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Federal agents found several firearms in the residence.
No attorney was listed for the defendant on the court documents.
The arrest was executed by a new interagency task force established by the Trump administration to target transnational organized crime and coordinate ongoing immigration enforcement efforts across Virginia. Its creation was part of a crackdown by the Trump administration on foreign gang members residing in the United States.
While officials did not explicitly say whether the man will be deported, the administration is working to pay El Salvador to imprison immigrants that it said have committed crimes and have been expelled from the US. MS-13 deportations, particularly of leaders, who are a priority for Salvadoran officials, and Trump officials agreed, CNN has previously reported.
One such effort included the deporting César Humberto López-Larios, CNN reported, an alleged top leader of the MS-13 who US investigators believe has information that could implicate top Salvadoran government officials in possibly corrupt deals with the violent gang. The Justice Department quietly dropped charges against López-Larios and returned him to El Salvador earlier this month.
