Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a potential Democrat presidential primary candidate, is again calling for the abolishment of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which enforces the nation’s immigration laws.
Ocasio-Cortez won her congressional race in 2018 partly on a platform that promised to dismantle and ultimately abolish ICE, even suggesting that illegal aliens deserve a “right of passage” into the United States.
Ocasio-Cortez eventually dropped the “Abolish ICE” talking point from her stump speech after polls found that even a majority of Democrats did not want the federal agency to be wiped out.
In a new campaign email, just as Ocasio-Cortez sets herself up as the new face of the Democrat Party heading into the 2027 presidential primary, the self-described “democratic socialist” is again resurfacing calls to abolish ICE.
“I believe that ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist,” Ocasio-Cortez writes in a campaign email, first reported by Business Insider.
Abolishing ICE would set free over a million illegal aliens, many of whom are violent felons, from immigration detention while eliminating the federal government’s enforcement arm that locates, arrests, and deports many of the nation’s 11 to 22 million illegal aliens.
Earlier this month, border czar Tom Homan suggested he was in talks with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over Ocasio-Cortez’s insistence to continuously give illegal aliens advice on how to evade ICE agents.
“What she’s doing, she says she’s educating everybody on their constitutional rights … but what she’s really doing… she’s trying to teach them how to evade law enforcement,” Homan said.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
The United States-born children of illegal aliens and temporary visa-holders, commonly referred to as “anchor babies,” are benefiting hugely from American taxpayer-funded welfare, the New York Times admits.
In a piece detailing President Donald Trump’s goals to preserve the nation’s social safety net for American citizens, the Times admits that anchor babies — who are rewarded birthright American citizenship even as their parents have no legitimate ties to the United States — are major welfare beneficiaries whose parents will be impacted by such policy changes.
“Immigration experts and advocates for immigrant rights say the changes would instead largely be felt by children who are U.S. citizens but whose parents are undocumented or immigrants who are authorized to live in the United States, such as refugees and people granted asylum,” the Times reports:
Twelve percent of American children, or about nine million people, are citizens with at least one noncitizen parent. Children with at least one immigrant parent are twice as likely to live in poverty than those with native-born parents, according to a 2022 report by researchers at the Boston University School of Social Work.
…
Some of the most substantial changes would come with the tax bill, a centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s economic agenda that House Republicans narrowly passed on Thursday. If approved by the Senate, the package would boost the child tax credit to as much as $2,500, but limit its availability to parents with Social Security numbers. [Emphasis added]
One of Trump’s first executive orders authorized federal agencies to examine all routes through which illegal aliens could be accessing welfare programs and ensure that such routes are eliminated so that the social safety net is protected for Americans.
Research from 2023 conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) underscored how the illegal alien parents of anchor babies collect millions in welfare solely because their child or children were given birthright citizenship.
“The high use of welfare by illegal immigrant-headed households may seem implausible,” CIS researchers stated in their findings. “However, there are several things to consider: First, more than half of all illegal immigrant households have one or more U.S.-born children.”
Today, close to 20 million illegal aliens reside in the United States, while about 250,000 anchor babies are delivered in American hospitals every year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says a federal judge’s court order blocking the Trump administration from deporting illegal aliens to South Sudan will cause “significant and irreparable harm to United States foreign policy.”
Rubio’s comments came in a late-night filing to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts after Judge Brian Murphy, appointed by former President Joe Biden, ruled this week that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) violated a prior preliminary injunction by deporting eight illegal aliens, all violent convicts, to South Sudan.
The Trump administration had deported the illegal aliens, some of whom have been convicted of murder, rape, and child sex crimes, to South Sudan after their native countries refused to take them back.
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Rubio, in his filing to the court, argues that Murphy’s order has already disrupted U.S. diplomacy with South Sudan, Libya, and Djibouti, threatening the president’s Article II authority to conduct foreign policy.
“This Department of Justice believes that this situation urgently requires judicial intervention to restore President Trump’s full Article II authority to conduct foreign policy,” a DOJ official told Breitbart News.
In a separate filing, Trump’s DOJ is asking for Murphy’s order to be stayed pending appeal, arguing that “federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way, or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given manner.”
“Because cooperation with other nations is required to transport and distribute international humanitarian aid, it is almost certain the Court’s interjection will result in delayed or reduced humanitarian efforts across the region in a time of severe humanitarian crisis,” the DOJ filing states.
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“Furthermore, the Court’s Orders impermissibly disrupt the President’s ability to faithfully execute the nation’s immigration laws,” the filing continues.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth similarly filed a declaration to the court, though it is under seal.
The illegal aliens deported to South Sudan include five convicted murderers, one convicted robber, one convicted child sex predator, and one convicted rapist. Several of the illegal aliens were also convicted of assault, and one was convicted of kidnapping in addition to his murder conviction.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
The Department of Justice is expanding a whistleblower program to reward corporate insiders who expose hidden white-collar migration crimes.
“Today, we have added the following priority areas for tips: procurement and federal program fraud; trade, tariff, and customs fraud; violations of federal immigration law,” said a department official, Matthew Galeotti, chief of the department’s Criminal Division.
The news created concern among companies that sideline American graduates in favor of hiring cheap, and subordinate foreign white-collar workers, often via the mixed-skill H-1B, J-1, H4EAD, B-1/B-2, CPT, and OPT programs. Those programs are heavily used by clannish Indian managers and their subordinate workers, with the strong backing of India’s government.
“New DOJ Whistleblower Policy Bad News For Employers Of Immigrants And H-1B Visa Holders,” wrote Stuart Anderson, a pro-migration consultant. He added:
The policy would allow the DOJ to expand efforts to prosecute employers of immigrants and H-1B visa holders. A Department of Justice memo issued in February 2025 directed federal prosecutors to prioritize immigration-related cases. The new whistleblower policy confirms that the Trump administration’s top issue remains immigration enforcement.
But the news was applauded by Americans who see blatant and continuous discrimination against American graduates, usually by the Indian-born hiring managers and recruiters who now dominate many hiring and recruitment offices across the nation.
“This is amazing, utterly amazing,” said Jay Palmer, a migration expert who works with lawyers to help both migrants and Americans. “What he had done is provided an excellent vehicle to counter the fraud, the abuse, and the manipulation” in the white collar sector, Palmer said
The announcement also comes after the new head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Andrea Lucas, announced more focus on visa fraud. “If you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop,” she said.
“We hope that what they do to enforce laws has teeth and leads to change,” said Dan Kotchen, at Kotchen & Low LLP, who has filed discrimination cases against major Indian-run staffing companies. He is also filing visa fraud cases via the False Claims Act, despite passivity from the federal government.
How it works
Executives and shareholders at Fortune 500 firms use layered pyramids of subcontractor vendors to minimize their use of full-time, well-paid, free-speaking, and productive American professionals, including programmers, accountants, architects, and managers.
The federal government allows many U.S. companies and “bodyshop” subcontractors — including many small firms — to fill the jobs with a wide variety of mixed-skill, no-rights, subservient, foreign contract workers. Some of the imported workers are skilled — but many are expected to learn on the job.
The Fortune 500 pyramids are very profitable because they allow cooperating CEOs and managers to divert a majority of each outsourcing contract into profits.
For example, the primary subcontractor may have few workers for a new contract, so it hires workers from several subcontractors, who hired workers from their sub-subcontractors, who hired workers from their sub-sub-subcontractors. “There is a deliberate attempt to convert full-time [white-collar] positions to W2 contracting [jobs] so they [each subcontractor] get a cut anywhere from $5 – $25 per hour,” an Indian-origin citizen told Breitbart News. “I have seen many layers of mid[-level vendors who are just pass through [firms to get] get a cut of $5 [per hour] each.”
Indian-born managers in the United States routinely fire skilled, productive American professionals before selling their jobs to kickback-paying Indian contract workers, according to Americans and Indians who have worked under these Indian-style office politics. The anti-merit office politics are echoed by many Twitter comments.
Indians dominate the contractor business and also dominate the business of recruiting technology experts for contract jobs. They often exclude American professionals during job searches to favor subordinated, kickback-paying Indians, said Palmer.
The Americans are not going to give them a kickback so all the Indians [recruiters and hiring managers] will get if they hire an American is the [commission] money they make from the [Fortune 500] company that contracted them [to recruit workers].
An Indian manager — and I saw this a million fucking times, excuse my language — [who instead hires Indians] will not only get [commission] money from the company who hired them to fill the [job] roles, but they’ll also get kickbacks from the Indian that comes over [wbecause he] will pay them [for the U.S. job].
“The unfortunate thing was, there was fraud in the [federal government’s] counter-fraud project,” one Indian former visa worker told Breitbart, adding:
The manager was Indian, and he kept hiring subcontractors. He would reject all the employees within the company, saying they didn’t have some particular skill. And then he would request for subcontractors, and the subcontractors would be just fresh graduates … The project failed because he kept bringing all the people on board, and they were missing deadline after deadline, and then eventually they fired him.
“People ask me: “Why do the Indians tolerate that?” — it’s because of poverty in their home country,” Palmer said. Many Indians are desperate to live in America, and others will work any job to send dollars back to their Indian families. They “live seven or eight to a house and send their money back to India,” he added.
U.S. executives ignore the nationwide anti-American discrimination, partly because it shrinks the workplace clout of U.S. professionals. The U.S. executives also rely on Indian managers to manage the resulting chaos and inefficiencies created by their mixed-skill Indian workers, according to many U.S. and Indian workers and managers.
“Everyone wanted to keep it hush-hush and, you know, make sure that the C-level guys slept well at night,” said Raul from Texas, who watched contractors and executives hide the contractors’ failure in a routine job. “I’d be curious to hear from the CFO perspective that they know of certain projects like this with some of the big-name consulting firms that have gone over budget and what that looked like from their side,” he added.
The closed-door chaos and inefficiencies are also unseen by profit-maximizing company boards and Wall Street stockpickers.
The pro-Indian favoritism is also hidden behind Indian banks, languages, workplace politics, caste rules, and social pressure from Indians in India and the United States.
Overall, “the U.S. visa program has been used as a tool of labor arbitrage,” said Kotchen, the lawyer. “We’re a tiny firm trying to change an industry to stop a practice that is abusive … to Americans [and to] indentured visa employees. “It’s almost as if we’re going back to the industrial revolution in terms of how employees are being treated,” he added.
For example, in February, he filed a racial discrimination case against an Indian-run staffing company and one of its recruiting firms, on behalf of an American citizen, Damilola Obembe:
Ms. Obembe was well-qualified for the position, and based on her conversations with IDC [Technologies recruiting] nrepresentatives, believed that she would be fairly considered and likely hired by TCS [Tata Consultancy Services]. That notion, however, was quickly dispelled after IDC mistakenly sent Ms. Obembe on an email which stated: “No Nigerians are accepted for Practice roles, Latin & Indians only.”
“To effectuate its preferences, TCS instructs [recruiters] to screen out candidates of non-preferred races and national origins,” says the Kotchen lawsuit:
TCS has a decade plus history of instructing third-party vendors to prefer candidates of certain races and national origins and to screen out candidates from non-preferred races and national origins. For instance, in an October 5, 2012 email chain, a representative from RConnect LLC (a third-party vendor) sent TCS Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist Brian Galicki a candidate for a billable U.S. position whose last name was “Swanson.” Mr. Galicki forwarded the candidate to a TCS project manager, who said: “I don’t know how to ask this subtly.. do u think we can get someone ‘desi’ [Indian] for this rek? [job]”
….
On March 4, 2013, Mr. Galicki, the same TCS recruiter from the 2012 email chain, emailed a representative from E*Pro Inc. (a third-party vendor), seeking candidates for a TCS practice role and stating, “I need more candidates for this but they[ ]must be Desi [slang for Indian] as there is a lot of offshore coordination.”
TCS — like numerous other Indian-run staffing companies — supplies Indian contract workers to many Fortune 500 companies seeking to minimize payroll for American professionals. TCS clients reportedly include Goldman Sachs, Rivian, Comcast, Target, Lyft, and many other firms. The Indian contract workers are imported via the work-permit programs, such as the H-1B program.
In 2023, the Indian press reported that Milind Lakkad, TCS’ chief human resources officer, said he wanted to reduce the number of Americans in its U.S. workforce and to hire more Indians who had lost jobs in the United States:
The company is also open to hiring people of Indian diaspora in the US who have lost their jobs with the [major U.S. firms] and may be on the brink of being forced to return home as per their visa conditions, Lakkad said.
At present, 70 per cent of its US employees are Americans, Lakkad said, adding that it would like to get the number down to 50 per cent because it also wants to offer global opportunities to its staff in India.
The Fortune 500’s reliance on Indian visa workers creates massive risks to innovation, privacy, stock values, and national security.
For example, many of the mixed-skill Indian workers share their computer screens with online advisors based in India, U.S. professionals told Breitbart. Others transfer corporate secrets and personal data back to India. Some of that data is sold to India’s home-grown industry of phone-call scammers who are stealing billions of dollars from older Americans each year. Indian culture accepts a large level of bribery and corruption.
The Indian inflow has deeply damaged career prospects for many American graduates who are locked out of career-starting jobs by Indian recruiters. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported :
The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8 percent—the highest reading since 2021—and the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2 percent.
The unemployment rate for high-tech graduates was higher than average, according to the report. For example, the unemployment rate for “computer engineering” graduates was 7.5 percent, and for “computer science” graduates was 6.1 percent.
But “leisure and hospitality” graduates had a 3.7 percent unemployment and “liberal arts” graduates had a 5.3 percent unemployment rate.
The visa programs are constantly abused, Kotchen, and “the most shocking part about it is that the laws on the books have not been enforced.” He added:
This is not a Democratic issue, it is both parties on a bipartisan basis have sided with major corporations against [employees] — that is 100 percent what is happening … My firm has worked so hard throughout administrations, including Trump’s first administration, to foster some degree of fairness and compliance.
This month, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would award almost 120,000 more H-1B visas to companies. The award is far above the much-touted annual cap of 85,000 visas because officials under President Joe Biden encouraged more non-profit enterprises — universities, hospitals, joint enterprises — to import the H-1Bs instead of hiring American graduates for decent salaries and good careers.
Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Weeknight” that the Trump administration targeted Newark, NJ, Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested at the Delaney Hall Detention Center.
Host Michael Steele asked, “Congresswoman, based off of your understanding of what you’ve learned about this case, and certainly what the mayor has offered publicly, do you — have you come to a conclusion, or are you coming to a conclusion, that he was targeted, as the mayor said?”
Ramirez said, “He was absolutely targeted. The idea that Secretary Noem would come before our Homeland Security Committee hearing and attempt to turn it around on him and on members of Congress that sit in that committee is despicable.”
She continued, “I mean, he came to do oversight on a facility. He was told to leave and otherwise they’d arrest him. He left and they closed the gate and then opened the gate after talking to who knows who, and then came back and arrested him.”
Ramirez added, “They’re wanting to make sure that the American people know that they’re willing to go after anyone. This is about fear. This is what authoritarians do, fascists do. They go after judges, members of Congress, and mayors of their own city.”
The nine judges on the Supreme Court showed little consensus as they grilled government lawyers about the costs and benefits of lower judges imposing nationwide restraining orders on President Donald Trump’s reformist polices, including his update of birth citizenship policies.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the many national restraining orders abort the evolution of courtroom and public debates on the issues, and they also block administration planning for how their electoral mandates should be implemented.
The injunctions — which are often imposed by singular partisan judges — should be narrowed to cover just the plaintiffs in each case so that major issues can democratically “percolate” through the multiple courts, the public, and the agencies, said John Sauer, the U.S. solicitor general.
“Percolation of novel, sensitive constitutional issues is a merit of our system,” Sauer said. “It is not a bad feature of the system.”
If nationwide blocks are needed, they can be set via additional class-action lawsuits by people throughout the nation, he added.
The Department of Justice did not ask the Supreme Court to decide the birth-citizenship issue because a “fast and furious” process would stymie the national debate, Sauer said. The courtroom debate on birthright citizenship is expected in 2026.
The judges “signaled that they may try to find a middle ground, perhaps by issuing guidance that would allow such temporary blocks only for some kinds of cases, or by requesting more briefing on the merits of the underlying executive order,” said the New York Times.
Since January, more than 40 nationwide injunctions have been dropped by mostly Democrat-picked judges on Trump’s campaign promises, including many on his mandate to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. The birthright citizenship reform, for example, has been blocked by three injunctions in three appeals courts.
Justice Clarence Thomas seems to agree with the White House, by noting that the United States had “survived” the absence of national junctions until the 1960s.
Opponents of the proposed citizenship update said curbs on nationwide injunctions would create chaos. Local injunctions would create inconsistencies and bureaucratic costs in various states, say those activists, many of whom supported the lawless, chaotic, and impoverishing inflow of almost 10 million southern migrants during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The opponents include lawyers for 22 Democrat-run states, nearly all of whom welcomed Biden’s law-breaking migration.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the practical problem of differing jurisdictions by asking the government: “What do hospitals do with a newborn? What do states do with a newborn?”
Those issues can be planned out and resolved if the issue is allowed to “percolate” without a nationwide injunction, Sauer responded.
Left-leaning judges suggested the White House would push past local legal defeats if the court decides to curb national injunctions. “Your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a catch me if you can kind of regime … where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
But Sauer argued that her concerns could be resolved through class-action suits.
Homeland Security Investigations Tampa — along with ERO Miami and the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) — has arrested over two dozen illegal immigrants at Florida construction sites, according to a recent update.
“BREAKING! @HSITampa @EROMiami @FLHSMV has arrested more than two dozen illegal aliens (some previously deported) at construction sites in Wildwood, Florida, during worksite enforcement encounters today!” HSI Tampa announced alongside a video of police on the construction sites.
According to authorities, the illegal immigrants — some of whom were previously deported — are from Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.
“And the mission continues…” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said, reposting the update.
The announcement came shortly after HSI Tampa announced that it was working to “determine if construction companies in the fastest growing region in the U.S. is employing illegal aliens & violating federal immigration law!”
It also follows DeSantis announcing this week that Florida is ready to do more on the immigration front. A May 12 press release notes that Florida has “more deputized state law enforcement officers under 287(g) task force deputizations than any other state in the nation,” adding that over 100 Florida Highway Patrol Troopers have been sworn in as Special Deputy U.S. Marshals as well.
RELATED — Exclusive: See Inside Trump’s Mass Deportation Program Targeting Gang Members, Criminal Aliens
“Florida has led the nation on immigration enforcement, and we’re ready to do even more,” DeSantis said in a statement, highlighting the state’s action in submitting what he described as “a plan to the federal government to contribute new detention facilities and expanded apprehension efforts to their ongoing mission to reclaim America’s sovereignty.”
The Trump administration has continued to prioritize deportations, making its case in the form of mugshots infamously displayed on the White House lawn, showcasing arrested illegal aliens and their corresponding criminal history, which includes murder, rape of a child, distribution of fentanyl, and much, much more.
The Trump administration has also opened the door for illegal immigrants to voluntarily self-deport, offering assistance with commercial flights for illegal aliens who leave willingly. They will receive a $1,000 stipend upon proof of exit, according to the plan unveiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
RELATED — Tom Homan, Kristi Noem: Illegal Alien Criminals Better Pack It Up
A CBS Poll released in April found that Trump’s deportation policy remains popular, as 56 percent approve of Trump’s “program to find and deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.”
On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe defended the church’s migration service refusing to resettle new migrants from South Africa and stated that “if you look at this decision, this is really about people who have jumped the line.”
Rowe said, “[L]ook at the thousands of people fleeing war and violence, people who are waking up dead around the world, people who have helped our military that are being left in camps on a daily basis while white Afrikaners have been fast-tracked. You’re right. It is about need. And if you look at this decision, this is really about people who have jumped the line. When you look at the fact that the entire refugee resettlement program in the United States has been totally gutted, that almost no refugees have been admitted since January, and the only ones that are being admitted are white Afrikaners, I don’t know what that says, but we can’t be a part of that.”
He added, “We had people waiting on airplanes. We had people who have helped our country, that have been translators for our military, that have been patriots for this country that are waiting in camps while white Afrikaners are being let in on a fast track. We feel like that, as a moral matter, we can’t participate in.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem joined Angel Families, whose loved ones have been killed by illegal aliens, to call on Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) to end the state’s sanctuary policies that shield illegal aliens from federal immigration law.
During a press conference in Springfield, Illinois, on Wednesday, Noem accused Pritzker of perpetuating “violence and criminality against his citizens in this state,” through the state’s sanctuary policy that seeks to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from getting custody of criminal illegal aliens sitting in local jails.
“People who support sanctuary policies talk about love and compassion. Well, where is the compassion for families that stand behind me?” Noem said. “… for two years, JB Pritkzer has protected individuals like that [illegal alien criminals] so that he can stand up and say that he is a sanctuary city and a sanctuary state. Shame on him.”
Alongside Noem was the brother of 66-year-old Denny McCann, killed by illegal alien felon Saul Chavez, who hit and dragged McCann nearly 300 feet to his death in a drunk-driving crash in 2011, and the father of 21-year-old Marine Lance Corporal James Ray Walden III, killed by an illegal alien in a crash in 2017.
“Two months after my brother was killed, Cook County encoded the law, passed the sanctuary law … and about 7 or 8 years later, Pritzker signed the sanctuary law,” Brian McCann, Denny’s brother, told the media. “We’re one of the most prolific sanctuary states in the union.”
Jim Walden said he will never get the chance to see his son Jimmie “grow, get married, have kids” because the illegal alien accused of killing him was shielded by sanctuary policies.
“… the state of Maryland admitted they knew he was illegal five years before he killed my son, and during that five-year period, they had him in jail five times,” Jim said. “He was convicted of domestic violence and put on probation.”
Denny McCann and Jimmie Walden, both killed by illegal aliens in the sanctuary state of Illinois. (Photos via Facebook)
“Jimmie would have been 30 years old yesterday,” he continued, noting that the illegal alien recently was charged with illegal reentry for the third time.
“No Angel Family’s death can be considered an accident because if the governor had done his job and deported these criminals, they wouldn’t have been able to kill our families. I just wish that I could see my son grow, get married, and have kids,” Jim said. “But it’s never going to happen.”
Kathy Zander, whose son John was killed by fentanyl poisoning, and Nancy Pletania, whose son Nick similarly died of fentanyl poisoning, also joined Noem at the press conference.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Police in Florida have arrested a Russian national for allegedly attempting to steal a luxury yacht and flee to the Bahamas.
Nikolai Vilkov, a 29-year-old Russian citizen, was arrested in Hobe Sound, Florida, while aboard a 68-foot luxury yacht after police pursued him on the Indian River for over an hour. Local sheriffs said that he likely stole more than one boat to get to his destination. Per the Maritime Executive:
At about 0100 hours Monday morning, Vilkov arrived at a restaurant parking lot in Jupiter, Florida, and was captured on surveillance camera walking down to a marina. At about 0200 hours, a TowBoat US response boat at that marina started up without authorization, and its GPS tracker showed it moving north. It then ran aground on a sandbar, and the unauthorized operator abandoned it. The thief was not immediately identified.
At 0300 hours, police for the town of Jupiter found Vilkov, who was on foot and walking down a highway near the site of the grounding. They had no evidence to connect him to the missing TowBoat US vessel, so he was allowed to go.
At about 1200-1300 hours, Vilkov arrived at a different marina, located about three hours to the north, police said. Bystanders spotted him aboard a 68-foot luxury yacht, preparing to get under way. At about 1555 hours, the dockmaster for the marina called police to report that the yacht had been stolen.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY ASSISTING MCSO WITH STOLEN YACHT INVESTIGATIONThe Martin County Sheriff’s Office has…
Police were able to push the yacht into the mangrove thicket near Hobe Sound Bridge and arrested Vilkov shortly afterward. Authorities speculate that he was likely heading for the Bahamas. He has been charged with grand theft, aggravated fleeing, and resisting arrest.
AND CAPTURED!Stolen luxury yacht suspect has been removed from the vessel and taken into custody. Will update shortly. #WrongInlet
