One of the three most dangerous leaders of the terroristic transnational criminal gang, MS-13, was removed from the streets of this county, specifically Dale City, by a joint task force of federal and Prince William law enforcement. The Prince William County Republican Committee gives its heartfelt thanks to the Attorney General of the United States Pam Bondi and local, state and Federal law enforcement, who under the direction of President Trump, and with the aid of Governor Glenn Youngkin, carried out this successful operation. President Trump has made removing criminal aliens from our country a priority, and Governor Youngkin has vastly helped that priority by creating Executive Order 287(g) which enhances Virginia law enforcement cooperation with Federal officers in cracking down on criminal aliens.
Governor Youngkin said at a press conference following the arrest that, “It’s this effort that has been enabled by the Trump Administration. President Trump said, ‘Get the bad guys.’ I’ve been working on this — literally — for the first three years of our administration with little to no help from the senior leadership in the federal government in the Biden Administration. On Day One [of President Trump’s second term], we went to work signing a 287(g) memorandum…. This task force was designed in the White House … architected in a very quick period of time and stood up immediately.”
Under the Biden Administration, local Democrat leaders like Prince William County Commonwealth Attorney Amy Ashworth (who was recently censored by a court for her refusal to honor a Freedom of Information Act request) were content to ignore the threat to our county posed by violent criminal aliens. The Democrat members of the County Board of Supervisors did their part in protecting MS-13 by removing cooperation in enforcing immigration laws, even against criminals, and if a Democrat governor succeeds Governor Younkin, they will do so again. An ICE official warned the county in 2020 that, “Prince William County’s new noncooperation policy ignores common sense public safety policies for the sake of politics, even to the point of ignoring a federal criminal warrant issued by a U.S. District Court.”
MS-13 is a gang that migrated to the U.S. among Salvadorian refugees fleeing the civil war there. They included some who were trained in guerilla tactics. Among its many crimes were hacking to death two high school girls in New York in 2016. In Virginia, MS-13 member Alas Canday, was sentenced in Federal Court on January 30 of this year for killing six persons in Virginia and Massachusetts.
The Prince William County Republican Committee also thanks our brave members of the Prince William County Police and their Federal law enforcement counterparts for undertaking this risky operation. According to WUSA9, “U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Eric Siebert called the Homeland Security task force the first of its kind in the country, using interagency collaboration. Siebert said the task force was launched on March 3, and it has led to 575 targets and 342 arrests.”
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