Illegal Immigrant Accused Of Beheading Marine In Iconic Statue Honoring America’s WWII Sacrifice

An illegal immigrant from Mexico allegedly took a sledgehammer to a limestone replica of the famous Iwo Jima monument outside Marine Corps Base Quantico late Wednesday, knocking the head clean off one of the Marines in the famous flag-raising scene.

Prince William County cops caught Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, mid-swing at about 10:15 p.m., pounding away at the limestone memorial with his sledgehammer. Police say the damage will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Federal sources told Fox News that the Stafford resident entered the United States in December 1999 as a child. He received protection under Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2014 and had it renewed for a decade, most recently under Joe Biden in 2024. That protection ran out in August when President Donald Trump’s administration did not renew it, the sources said.

NEW: Multiple federal sources confirm to @FoxNews that the suspect arrested for using a sledgehammer to behead a WW2 Iwo Jima monument in Quantico, VA on Tuesday is a Mexican illegal alien & former DACA recipient whose legal status expired this year.

Miguel Alonso Maldonado… pic.twitter.com/dUOOrk4y0x

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) October 23, 2026

“This criminal illegal alien’s dream is over: Maldonado Soriano disrespected our brave service members and defaced a beautiful monument that honored their sacrifice,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the New York Post. “President Trump has secured our border and is deporting illegal criminals who hate our country and our values. The socialist Democrats want to go back to open borders and flood our communities with dangerous criminal illegal aliens.”

The alleged rampage left one Marine headless. A second Marine lost the bayonet from the rifle slung across his back, and a third had his helmet and face chipped and gouged, according to police.

Maldonado Soriano faces felony counts of destruction of property and injury to a monument, plus a trespassing charge. Authorities are holding him without bond.

Felix de Weldon, the sculptor behind both the original giant bronze memorial in Arlington and the limestone replica in Quantico, carved the nine-foot statue, which stands at the base’s main gate near the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

The replica has taken hits before. Vandals defaced it in 2012, and a 2018 windstorm cracked the figures’ hands so badly that officials had to take down the flag. Marines at the time begged to fix it themselves, according to Potomac Local. One called the base and said to “send a Gunny and three Marines out there,” a spokesman recalled.

The statue honors one of the most famous moments in American military history.

On February 19, 1945, Marines stormed Iwo Jima, a speck of volcanic rock 750 miles south of Tokyo that the United States needed for its airfields. Some 21,000 Japanese troops waited in a maze of tunnels and bunkers, with Mount Suribachi looming over the beaches.

Four days later, a Marine patrol fought its way to the summit and raised a small flag, setting off cheers from troops below and sailors offshore, History.com reported. Commanders wanted something bigger that everyone could see, so Marines hauled a second, larger flag up the mountain that afternoon, according to Britannica.

Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal nearly missed it. He swung up his camera just in time to capture six Marines straining to plant the pole. The image won a Pulitzer Prize and became the face of a wartime bond drive.

The battle raged for another month. Nearly 7,000 Americans died, and the fighting wiped out almost the entire Japanese garrison.

Three of the six flag-raisers never left the island, according to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service. Sgt. Michael Strank, the squad leader, and Cpl. Harlon Block died in combat on March 1. Pfc. Franklin Sousley, just 19, fell on March 21.

Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona, came home a reluctant celebrity on a national bond tour. Haunted by the friends he’d lost, he battled alcoholism and died in 1955 at age 32.

The last two, Pfc. Harold Schultz and Cpl. Harold Keller, quietly went back to civilian life without ever publicly claiming their place in history. The Marine Corps confirmed in 2016 and 2019, decades after both men had died, that they were in the photo, correcting a record that had wrongly credited others, Military Times reported.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org