Bond Set for Illegal Alien Accused of Vandalizing Iwo Jima Memorial Replica
Bond has been set and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a detainer for the Obama-Biden “migrant” accused of vandalizing the Iwo Jima Memorial at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
The suspect in the costly crime is Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano.
Cops say the Mexican illegal alien decapitated the effigy of the most-forward Marine, Corporal Harlon Block.
A media report falsely identified Soriano as a “Virginia man.”
The Vandalism
Marine Corps Base Quantico is about 36 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., on the Potomac River in Prince William County. It is home to the FBI Academy and Marine Corps’s Officer’s Candidate School.
The statue, which sits at the base’s entrance, is a nine-foot limestone replica of Felix de Weldon’s memorial next to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. A representation of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph, the memorial depicts the flag raising on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945, four days after the battle for the volcanic island began.
County cops caught Soriano “actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer,” the department stated. “Damage to the statue, which included the removal of one of the depicted soldier’s head[s] in addition to other damage, is estimated to be in [the] hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The Mexican miscreant was charged with two felonies — destruction of property and injury to a moment — and trespassing with intent to damage property.
In court this morning, Prince William Circuit Court Judge Petula Metzler handed Soriano a $2,500 bond, ABC 7 in Washington, D.C., reported. ICE placed a detainer on him.
“This criminal illegal alien’s dream is over: Maldonado Soriano disrespected our brave service members and defaced a beautiful monument that honored their sacrifice,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News:
President Trump has secured our border and is deporting illegal criminals who hate our country and our values. The socialist Democrats want to go back to open borders and flood our communities with dangerous criminal illegal aliens.
“Nothing says deport me like beheading an Iwo Jima memorial, if proven,” George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley wrote on X.
“The damage included the complete removal of one Marine’s head, along with damage to other figures,” Fox reported. “A third figure sustained damage to a bayonet attached to a gun slung over his back.”
DACA Recipient
Soriano, 27, is a classic Obama-Biden “migrant.”
He entered the country in 1999 at an unknown date and location, meaning he was a baby when someone packed him across the border illegally. “He was granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in October 2014 by the Obama Administration, which was renewed by the Biden Administration,” the Department of Homeland Security reported. “His DACA has since expired.” DHS also reported that Soriano was arrested for trespassing in Stafford County in 2022.
DACA was the Obama administration’s unlawful program to keep illegals in the country until it became impossible to deport them, which would end in citizenship and most of them becoming Democratic voters.
Decisions from far-left judges have kept the program going despite its obvious illegality. In 2019, The New American reported that 10 percent of DACA recipients had been arrested for crimes — some of them serious, such as rape and murder.
It now turns out that some of them are simply vandals and vagabonds. Having been given the privilege of staying in the country, they repay that imprudent generosity by attacking the nation’s heritage and monuments. American history, notably the sacrifices of American fighting men, means nothing to the average DACA recipient.
The MilitaryTimes called the Mexican a “Virginia man.”
Harlon Block
Block, of Yorktown, Texas, was 20 when he was killed days after the flag-raising on March 1. Others in the memorial are Corporal Harold P. Keller, privates first class Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, and Franklin Sousley, and Sergeant Michael Strank, buried nearby at Arlington.
“Touted as heroes, the flag raisers commenced a nationwide tour as living embodiments of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s tribute to those who served on Iwo Jima: ‘uncommon valor was a common virtue,’” reported Investigating Iwo, published by Quantico’s Marine Corps History Division:
Gagnon, Hayes, and Bradley became household names, as did their now-fallen comrades Strank, Sousley, and Hansen, whose gold-star mothers made public appearances in support of the loan drive as well. By the summer of 1946, however, it had become evident that the Marine Corps had made an error in attribution.
Belle Block, the mother of deceased Marine Corporal Harlon H. Block, claimed that her son was pictured in Rosenthal’s famous photograph. Surviving flag raiser Ira Hayes agreed, and penned a letter of support to Mrs. Block.
The Marine Corps revised its identification in 1947, said Hansen was not in the photograph, and instead recognized Block.
He is buried at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas.
News reports have not said whether former Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden, who ensured that Soriano was in the country to vandalize the beloved and highly regarded statue, will help pay to restore it.
