Alleged UFC White House ringleader was in US illegally

By Bethany Blankley
The Center Square

The alleged ringleader of a planned terrorist attack targeting the White House was in the country illegally, had overstayed his tourist visa for more than 10 years, and is a DACA recipient, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice charged five men for their alleged roles in a plan to kill government officials and others attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Freedom 250 event held at the White House on Sunday. The FBI arrested five men in Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska and California for their alleged roles in the thwarted attack.

The alleged ringleader, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, of Omaha, Nebraska, “was responsible for planning, organizing, and directing the planned attack, based on conversation excerpts in June when [he] posted, ‘This is the best action I see. Position your teams in the purple dots (counter sniper and drones) Long range (circled area) (great shot) Easy out into the river.’” He also posted other messages “including replying to another member on making drones with explosives, ‘As many and as deadly as we can get’; that he was working on drones; and had one drone and was working on more,” according to charges filed in Nebraska.

On Thursday, DHS confirmed that Alvarez was a Mexican national who was in the country illegally after he overstayed a B-2 temporary tourism visa for more than 10 years.

A B-2 visa requires applicants “to demonstrate that they have ties to their home country that they do not intend to abandon, have enough funds to support themselves during their stay in the US, and that they intend to leave the US at the end of their visit. The maximum stay for a B-2 visa is typically six months,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services explains.

Instead, Alvarez and his family overstayed the visa for more than a decade.

Alvarez entered the U.S. on a B-2 visitor visa and failed to depart before it expired in December 2001, DHS said. He and his family remained in the country illegally and in 2014, former President Barack Obama granted him and hundreds of thousands of other children in the country illegally Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.

After Alvarez’s arrest this weekend, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer request with the jail where he is being detained.

“This illegal alien from Mexico should never have been allowed in our country. He was the ringleader of a failed terror attack targeting UFC Freedom 250 at the White House,” DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said. “He and his co-conspirators now face charges of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit violence on White House grounds. He will face justice and swiftly be removed from our country.”

The arrests were made as the Trump administration is cracking down on visa fraud, including the B-1/B-2 visa program, The Center Square reported.

They were also made after other DACA recipients have been arrested for a range of crimes. This is after nearly 80,000 DACA recipients were released into the U.S. with arrest records raising concerns about a lack of vetting, The Center Square reported.

Obama created DACA via executive order to shield children from deportation who were brought into the country illegally by their parents. The program has been in litigation for more than a decade.

Texas and a coalition of states were the first to sue, arguing DACA is illegal and must be terminated. Other lawsuits were also filed over the program. In each one, federal judges ruled the executive action creating DACA, extending it, amending it or ending it, is illegal because only Congress can create or amend laws related to immigration.

In several ongoing cases, federal judges continue to rule that DACA is illegal. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has twice ruled it is illegal.

The Biden administration sought to expand it, attempting to require that DACA recipients be provided with taxpayer-funded healthcare. Multiple states sued and a federal judge ruled the scheme was illegal, The Center Square reported.

President Donald Trump has waffled on the issue. In his first administration he sought to end DACA. In his second administration, he’s vowed to deport illegal foreign nationals while also saying Republicans support so-called “dreamers,” DACA recipients.

Republican attorneys general disagree, including Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sued to end DACA years ago. Texas and other Republican-led states have won their cases in multiple federal courts, with judges only curtailing, not ending, the program, The Center Square reported.

According to a 2019 report by the Center for American Progress, within five years of Obama creating the program, more than 825,000 children, at an average age of 6, were brought to the U.S. illegally, enrolled in DACA and received temporary relief from being deported. Since then, DACA recipients have had more than 250,000 children born in the U.S., the center estimates.