The suspect who allegedly stole U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s bag while she dined with family at a hamburger restaurant late Easter Sunday is a criminal illegal migrant, authorities said Sunday.
Matt McCool, Special Agent in Charge of the Secret Service Washington Field Office, announced Sunday that Secret Service agents, working closely with the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., had arrested a suspect believed to have robbed Noem of her bag. “The defendant was taken into custody without incident in the District of Columbia,” McCool said.
The suspect was a “serial offender” but he appeared not to have targeted Noem because of her person or position as DHS Secretary, McCool added. The suspect will face charges in a federal court, according to McCool.
“This individual is a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years,” Noem said in a post on X, while thanking the Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other law enforcement agencies investigating the theft that occurred April 20 at The Capital Burger. The restaurant is located a mile from the White House.
Neither Noem nor McCool named the suspect, but the New York Post — citing law enforcement sources — identified the suspect as Mario Bustamante-Leiva, 49, of Santiago, Chile. (RELATED: Kristi Noem Robbed Of Thousands In Cash, Other Important Items At Restaurant On Easter)
BREAKING: Illegal immigrant and career criminal Mario Bustamante-Leiva, 49, of Chile, has been identified as the suspect accused of purse snatching @Sec_Noem over Easter weekend , sources tell The Post.
Bustamante-Leiva is believed to be part of a large east coast robbery… pic.twitter.com/gqMjCYgIWw
— Jennie Taer 🎗️ (@JennieSTaer) April 27, 2025
“A law enforcement source in D.C. has confirmed to me the man accused of stealing DHS Sec. Noem’s purse is Mario Bustamante Leiva [sic],” Julio Rosas, national correspondent at The Blaze posted.
Ed Martin, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told NBC News over the phone that Bustamante-Leiva was in the country illegally.
Bustamante-Leiva is suspected of being the masked man who walked into the restaurant, past two plainclothes Secret Service officers and upstairs to a spot next to Noem’s table. There, he dragged Noem‘s purse toward himself — while Noem and her family dined — and left the restaurant with the purse tucked away under his jacket, according to NBC News. He passed by the Secret Service agents on his way out, according to the outlet.
“This 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,” Martin told the outlet.
The stolen item was a $4,400 Gucci bag lying on the ground next to Noem and containing a $600 Louis Vuitton Clemence Purse and $3,000 in cash, according to the Post.
It also contained Noem‘s DHS access badge, her passport, various credit cards, blank checks, a set of keys and her driver’s license, NBC News reported.
Noem told podcaster, and Daily Caller Editorial Director, Vince Coglianese Wednesday that she felt the purse being moved from her feet, according to the Post.
“I thought it was my grandkids kicking me in the legs, but it was very professionally done,” Noem reportedly added on the “Vince” podcast.
Law enforcement agents were still seeking a second suspect in the theft of Noem’s possessions, Martin told NBC News.
Bustamante-Leiva was one of the most prolific thieves in London, U.K. — until he was jailed there in 2015 for conducting a five-month theft spree that included stealing phones, wallets, and computers collectively worth £21,000 (nearly $28,000), the Daily Mail reported.
Once, he stole a bag containing a whole family’s passports and airplane boarding passes, and in another instance, he brazenly stole a woman’s handbag as she chatted with a friend, the central London court reportedly learned during Bustamante-Leiva’s trial.
“You are dishonest to your fingertips,” the judge said to Bustamante-Leiva at his sentencing in London.
“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,” Noem said.
“What I can tell you is he won’t be back on the streets in America,” Martin told NBC News regarding the suspect.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
