Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano

ABC News, October 22. The anchor says a Virginia man was arrested after allegedly knocking the head off a World War II memorial. Police, she says, say a 27-year-old used a sledgehammer on the Iwo Jima memorial near the Marine Corps base in Quantico. The damage is expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. He is charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage property, and felony injury to a monument, and the segment says he is being held without bond. The chyron is “man arrested for allegedly damaging Iwo Jima memorial.” The booking photo from Prince William County police sits on the screen while none of that includes a name. Facebook’s count on the reel, when this was pulled, was 289,000 views.

The name is Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, 27, of Stafford. Prince William County police say officers found him about 10:13 p.m. on October 21 at the statue near Richmond Highway and Fuller Road, just outside Marine Corps Base Quantico, still hitting it with a sledgehammer. A court document CNN reported said he was up on the monument trying to take the American flag. The statue is the limestone flag-raising. These are charges. He has not been convicted of them.

What the script left out is in the Department of Homeland Security’s statement the next day. DHS says he is a Mexican national who entered the United States in 1999, was granted DACA in October 2014, and whose DACA has since expired. DHS also says he was arrested in Stafford County for trespassing in 2022. On October 26, CNN reported a judge had set a $2,500 secured bond and that ICE had lodged a detainer, so posting bond does not mean he walks out. “Held without bond” was the night of the arrest. It is not the last line in the file.

The word ABC used for him was Virginia. The photo was already on the screen. A state is not a country, and a booking photo with no name is not a description. The name, the country, and the expired status were public the same week. The segment used none of them.