A Chilean illegal immigranti has been arrested in the theft of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse last week at a downtown restaurant in the District, officials said Sunday.
Metropolitan Police officers and Secret Service agents nabbed the suspect on Saturday, six days after he made off with Ms. Noem’s license, passport and $3,000 in cash when he stole her designer handbag at Capital Burger.
The New York Post, citing “law enforcement sources,” identified the man as Mario Bustamante-Leiva, 49.
Ms. Noem said Sunday that Mr. Bustamante-Leiva “is a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years.”
“Thank you to the Secret Service, ICE and our law enforcement partners for finding and arresting the criminal who stole my bag on Easter Sunday as I shared a meal with my family at a Washington DC restaurant,” the secretary wrote on X.
“Unfortunately, so many families in this country have been made victims by crime, and that’s why President Trump is working every single day to make America safe and get these criminal aliens off of our streets,” her post continued.
A second person is being sought in connection to the high-profile theft, according to NBC News.
Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin told the network previously that the thief’s alleged accomplice also is in the country illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have joined in the investigation, Mr. Martin said.
Ms. Noem was not targeted by the thieves for her position in the Trump administration, Mr. Martin said.
“There is no indication it was because of that,” he told NBC. “IFrankly, it was a nice-looking purse.”
Mr. Martin added that the thief “was not an amateur. This was a person, a thief that knew how to do this. You could see how he scouted the room out.”
The suspected thief is believed to be part of a large East Coast robbery crew, according to the Post.
Surveillance footage from Capital Burger showed a White man wearing dark clothing, a dark-colored baseball hat and a white N95 mask sitting near Ms. Noem’s table just before 8 p.m. on April 20.
The man inched closer to Ms. Noem before using his foot to pull the purse toward himself, the footage showed. The thief then slipped the purse under his jacket and walked out.
“It was kind of shocking, actually, because it was sitting right by my feet. I actually felt my purse — he hooked it with his foot and drug it a few steps away and dropped a coat over it and took it,” Ms. Noem told podcaster Vince Coglianese last week.
