ICE told Fox News on Friday that they caught a known member of the MS-13 gang this week. The person has a long history of arrests, including for assault and burglary.
On Monday, ICE Washington, D.C. arrested Mykol Santos-Santos, 25, who is from Guatemala and was in the country illegally. He was arrested in Fairfax, Virginia.
When Santos-Santos fought back, an ICE officer was hurt during the arrest.
Santos-Santos has been charged with and convicted of assault and battery, burglary, credit card fraud, theft, drug crimes, property damage, obstruction of justice, trying to escape police, failing to appear in court, and breaking court orders.
While he was being held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, ICE arrested him because they would not respect their 16th immigration detainer.
ICE said that Santos-Santos has more than 15 pages of criminal records in its database. Fairfax County police have caught him more than 30 times.
In the past three years, 16 immigration detainers have been put on him.
“Mykol Santos-Santos breaks the law all the time.” “He is known to be a member of a violent criminal gang and has a long history of crime. He is a very serious threat to the people of Virginia,” said Russell Hott, director of ICE’s Washington, D.C. field office. “While we are happy to have arrested him, we find it inexcusable that local law enforcement refused to honor 16 separate immigration detainers against Santos-Santos, forcing ICE officers to make an at large arrest where one of our officers was injured.”
He went on, “We could have worked with local police to make sure the transfer of custody was safe.” They put politics ahead of public safety instead, and one of our brave cops was hurt during the incident. ICE Washington, D.C., will continue to put the safety of the public first by arresting and removing criminal aliens who pose a threat to our neighborhoods.
It was illegal for Santos-Santos to come to the U.S. through Texas in 2014. In 2023, an immigration judge at the Department of Justice ordered his removal.