The Quickest Way to Make 2 Million Enemies Who Don't Give a #@%!

What Happened

Prince William County police say officers answering a destruction-of-property call shortly after 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, found a man actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer. He was detained without incident.

The man is Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, of Stafford, Virginia. He is charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage, and felony injury to a monument. He was held without bond pending a court appearance Friday afternoon.

One Marine figure’s head was knocked off completely, and other figures were damaged. Police put the damage in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Photos of the damage suggest the beheaded figure is Harlon Block, the Marine planting the base of the pole.

Then came the part that turned a vandalism case into a national story. Federal sources told Fox News that Maldonado Soriano is a Mexican national who entered the U.S. illegally in December 1999. He received DACA in 2014, had it renewed through 2024, and lost it in August 2026 when it was not renewed. A White House spokeswoman told Fox the suspect had disrespected service members and that his “dream is over.”

Two things should be said up front. DHS has since confirmed to CNN that he has been in the U.S. since 1999 and received DACA under the Obama administration. The August lapse still rests on unnamed federal sources. And Maldonado Soriano has been charged, not convicted. Police have not released a motive. He is entitled to his day in court, and he will get one.

What He Swung At

This was not a random lawn ornament. It is one of the earliest Iwo Jima memorials ever made, carved the same year as the battle.

Felix de Weldon, then serving in the Navy, saw Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of the Feb. 23, 1945 flag raising on Mount Suribachi and started sculpting. He finished the limestone version at Quantico before the end of 1945. The 60-foot bronze in Arlington didn’t come until 1954.

The battle it depicts killed 6,821 Americans in five weeks, most of them Marines, along with the Navy corpsmen and Seabees who went ashore with them. Three of the six men raising that flag never left the island. Harlon Block, the Texan whose likeness appears to have lost its head this week, was killed on March 1, 1945.

Those men had names. They were sons, brothers and fathers who made the ultimate sacrifice so this country could become what it is. You can read thousands of those names here, each with a hometown and the date he fell. A fuller record of every Marine lost in World War II, drawn from Marine Corps casualty cards, lists the Iwo Jima dead among them, name by name. Spend five minutes with them before you read the rest of this column.

For Marines, the Quantico statue is not a tourist stop. It is where we go to mark the moments that matter. The director of the National Museum of the Marine Corps noted that it is a regular site for promotions, commissionings, retirements and reenlistments. Generations of officers trained at Quantico have driven past it on their way in.

For 80 years, that image of six men driving a flagpole into volcanic rock has been one of the most iconic symbols of strength, determination and brotherhood this country has. He didn’t just damage a statue of Marines. He took a sledgehammer to the place where Marines come to reenlist, get promoted and retire, the spot where they mark the biggest moments of their careers.

The Enemies He Made

The Marine Corps is authorized 172,300 Marines on active duty and 33,600 in the Selected Reserve this fiscal year.

Then add the ones who already took the uniform off. An estimated 1.7 million living Americans are Marine Corps veterans, about one in ten of the nation’s roughly 17.3 million living veterans. Put them together and you are looking at close to 2 million people who earned the title Marine and are still here to be furious about this.

That is before you count the other 15 million veterans from every other branch, who know exactly what that statue means.

Here is what that family does not care about. It does not care what was going through his head. It does not care which party gets to score points off his immigration file. It does not care about the think pieces explaining that it was “only” a replica.

Here is what it does care about. It will show up. At the courthouse, in the restoration fund, in the comment section, and at every public meeting where someone suggests this be pleaded down to a misdemeanor and a fine.

Let me be equally clear about what Marines should not do. Nobody needs to do anything stupid on our behalf. The man is in custody. Prince William County has him. The worst thing any of us could do is hand him a second story to tell. Our answer is the law, the fundraiser, and the rebuilt statue.

Nobody should mistake that restraint for indifference. The anger in the Marine community this week is real, and it runs deep. We are choosing to channel it, because that is what discipline means.

The DACA Question

If the federal sources are right, the timeline is the part that should bother everyone.

Maldonado Soriano arrived in December 1999, which puts him here as an infant. At 27, this is the only country he has ever really known. The United States didn’t just tolerate him. For roughly a decade it extended him deferred action, renewal after renewal, under two administrations of different parties.

In simple terms: DACA was never a right. It is a discretionary grant of protection from deportation, handed out case by case and renewed on the understanding that the recipient stays out of serious trouble. It is the closest thing American immigration law has to a handshake.

What do you call it when the person on the other end of that handshake walks up to a memorial for the men who died securing the country that took him in, and swings a sledgehammer at its face? I call it the most ungrateful act I can imagine.

Now the fair counterpoint, because this publication owes readers one. Hundreds of thousands of people have held DACA status, and the overwhelming majority have never been anywhere near a story like this. One man’s alleged act is not an indictment of every young person brought here as a child. It is an indictment of one man, if a jury agrees.

There is a second counterpoint the White House would rather skip. By these accounts he lost his status in August. If that is true, he was out of status and living in Stafford for about two months before this happened. Whatever this case says about DACA, it also says something about what happens after DACA ends.

Both of those points can be true at once. Neither of them puts a head back on that statue.

What Should Happen Now

Prosecute the felonies as charged. Injury to a monument is a felony in Virginia for a reason. If the evidence holds, this should not be pleaded down to a fine and a lecture. Federal prosecutors should take a look too: federal law allows up to 10 years for willfully damaging a qualifying military memorial on public property, provided there is a federal connection such as ownership of the land.
Make restitution real. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage should follow him in a court order, whether or not he can ever pay it.
Let immigration consequences follow the verdict, not the headline. If he is convicted, removal after his sentence is the obvious outcome. Due process first. Deportation by press release cheapens both.
Rebuild it, and let Marines pay for it. The Arlington memorial was paid for by Marines, friends of the Corps and the Naval Service, with no public funds. If Quantico opens a restoration fund, I expect it to be oversubscribed within a week.
Review the security. The statue stands at the entrance road to a Marine Corps base, and a man still had time to take a head off before police arrived. And this is not the first time. Vandals sprayed pink paint on its base in December 2012, and the porous limestone stayed stained until a 2014 restoration. Twice is a pattern. That deserves a hard look.

Semper Fidelis

The Marine motto means always faithful. Faithful to each other, to the Corps, and to the country.

The men in that statue were faithful on a black-sand island 660 miles from Tokyo, and half of the six who raised that flag never came home. They did not stop to ask who would be grateful.

The man accused of swinging that hammer will have a lawyer, a judge, and a jury. He will get every protection those Marines fought to keep. That is how this country works, and it is the whole point.

But he will never again walk past a Marine without knowing exactly what that Marine thinks of him. Of everything that happens to him from here, that may be the sentence that lasts longest.

Dominick Bianco is the Editor-in-Chief of NexfinityNews and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. The views expressed are his own.

The Quickest Way to Make 2 Million Enemies Who Don’t Give a #@%!