FBI: Suspected MS-13 Gang Leader on ‘10 Most Wanted’ List Captured in Mexico

Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales is the third fugitive on the ‘Most Wanted’ list to be apprehended since Trump’s inauguration.

Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales. FBI

A suspected senior member of the criminal MS-13 gang has been captured, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on March 18.

Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales, 47, of El Salvador, who is on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted” list, stands accused of several offenses for “his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members, as well as his role in drug distribution and extortion schemes in the United States and El Salvador,” according to his wanted poster.

“He was arrested in Mexico and is being transported within the U.S. as we speak, where he will face American justice,” Patel wrote on social media platform X. “This is a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America.”

The charges against Roman-Bardales include conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists, narco-terrorism conspiracy, racketeering conspiracy, and alien smuggling conspiracy.

The FBI had offered a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to his arrest.

Roman-Bardales is the third fugitive on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list to be apprehended since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

The first, Donald Eugene Fields II, was arrested on Jan. 25 in Lady Lake, Florida. Fields, 60, faces a federal child sex trafficking charge, as well as state charges in Missouri of statutory rape, statutory sodomy, child molestation, and witness tampering.

The second fugitive, Arnoldo Jimenez, was arrested in Monterrey, Mexico, on Jan. 30. Jimenez, 43, is facing a first-degree murder charge for allegedly stabbing his wife to death in Illinois. He has also been charged federally with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

At a press briefing on March 19, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the additional arrests of “a number of dangerous aliens across the country.” The list included illegal immigrants charged with sexual battery, rape, assault by strangulation, indecent sexual contact with a child, and assault with a firearm combined with rape with a foreign object.

“These are heinous criminal alien monsters who the previous administration allowed to flood into our country, and every time President Trump and his team deport one of them, our country becomes safer,” Leavitt said.

A White House press release added: “Under President Donald J. Trump, the message to criminals who bring harm and destruction to our communities is simple: You will be found, and you will face justice.”

One of the president’s first moves upon taking office was to order the designation of international cartels and criminal gangs, such as MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations.

Such gangs, Trump wrote in his executive order, lead “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally” that “threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration, starting with the deportation of noncitizens who pose a public safety or national security threat.

Those efforts have met with resistance in federal courts. Last week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued orders temporarily blocking the deportation of illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, which the president had invoked to speed up the removal of Tren de Aragua members.

The administration is appealing those orders.