OAN Staff Abril Elfi
Sunday, April 27, 2025
UPDATE 10:52 AM – The suspect accused of stealing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Gucci bag containing approximately $3,000 in cash has been identified as a Chilean undocumented migrant.
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According to a report by the New York Post, Mario Bustamante-Leiva, 49, was detained on Saturday after reportedly stealing the shoulder bag when Noem, 53, was celebrating Easter with her family at The Capital Burger in Washington, DC.
Bustamante-Leiva, who is illegally in the United States, is considered to be a member of a vast east coast robbery network, and law enforcement is still looking for another undocumented immigrant who served as his accomplice.
US Attorney Ed Martin stated that Noem was not targeted because of her high-profile position, and that the suspects were likely drawn to the pricy Gucci bag, which also included her driver’s license, passport, DHS badge, and apartment keys.
Bustamante-Leiva was previously arrested in 2015 for a five-month theft spree in London, during which he stole about $28,000 in phones, wallets, and computers, according to a Daily Mail report at the time.
Martin stated that Bustamante-Leiva and his accomplice will never return to the nation now that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been engaged in the case.
“It was frankly… a nice looking purse. 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 NBC News.
10:22 AM – The suspect accused of stealing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s Gucci bag containing approximately $3,000 in cash has been arrested.
According to a report by the New York Post, the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service have arrested the suspect and are currently searching for a second suspect connected to the case.
Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin told NBC 4 that both suspects are undocumented migrants and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now involved in the case.
The New York Post also reported that the suspect is set to appear in court early this week.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that a “defendant has been taken into custody.”
Noem posted a statement on X, thanking the Secret Service and ICE for their work in arresting the criminal.
On Easter Sunday, Noem was with her family at The Capital Burger in Washington, D.C., when the suspect stole her luxury bag, which included the cash, her driver’s card, passport, prescription, makeup bag, blank checks, DHS badge, apartment keys, and a Louis Vuitton Clemence wallet.
According to authorities, the bag was on the floor at her table when it was stolen.
Video surveillance shows a white man in a N95 surgical mask, dark pants and a baseball cap grabbing the bag before leaving the restaurant.
Sources who viewed the tape told the New York Post that the suspect can be seen glancing around before snatching the bag, covering it with his jacket and running out of the restaurant.
“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,” Noem told podcaster Vince Coglianese on the “VINCE Show.”
“I felt it, but I thought it was my grandkids kicking me in the legs. But it was very professionally done, and it tells that this happens all the time to people and that they live in communities where this is a danger and it reaffirms why I am here,” she added. “My job is to make sure that I do everything, every day I can to make our communities safer and President Trump recognizes that families shouldn’t have to live with any kind of violence in their lives.”
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