The battle to land the new headquarters of the FBI has turned ugly, NBC 4 Washington reports. 

In one case, a Fairfax County official took a swipe at Prince George’s County, saying it’s the place where the FBI would be busy because of criminals.

“I made that comment in the context of talking about why Fairfax County is the most appropriate location for the FBI headquarters, including our safe neighborhoods and decades-long tradition of good government,” Fairfax County Development Association President Gerry Gordon told NBC 4.

“Quite frankly, I was stunned,” Prince George’s County Deputy Chief of Economic Development Aubrey Thagard responded.

Steve Neavling

Fairfax County in Virginia is lobbying the FBI to move its headquarters to an abandoned warehouse in Springfield, the Washington Post reports.

The location is perfect, Fairfax officials said.

It’s close to the Metro and major highways and the warehouse meets the needs of a new headquarters, the Post reported.

It appears Fairfax has competition from Prince George County, which also is close to the Metro and major highways.

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ice photo

It may have been a minor oversight the time — but the misstep could have prevented the rape of an 8-year-old girl.

Tom Jackman of the Washington Post reports that immigration authorities failed to enter in a national data base the fingerprints of Salvador Portillo-Saravia before they deported him to  El Salvador in 2003.  So seven years later, because his fingerprints were not in a data base, Portillo-Saravia, who had sneaked back into the U.S., was released from the Loudoun County Jail in Virginia. A month later, Jackman reports, Fairfax County police say he raped an 8-year-old girl.

In a letter to  Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) , Elliot Williams, Immigration and Customs Enforcement  assistant director for congressional relations, wrote that “the agency policy to enroll the fingerprints in IDENT was not followed, thereby reducing ICE’s ability to thwart this terrible and tragic event.” according to the Post. The paper wrote that ” ICE officials could not say why the prints weren’t entered in 2003.”

The paper reported Portillo-Saravia was captured last month in Houston and is now facing the rape charges.

To read more click here.

Loudoun County Jail

Salvador Portillo-Saravia, a member of the MS-13 street gang, was charged with raping an 8-year-old girl at her Fairfax County (Va.) home last month. But he never should have been in Fairfax in the first place.

Federal officials deported Portillo-Saravia, of Sterling, to El Salvador in 2003, and he sneaked back in illegally. Now, officials are wondering why a much-touted federal program didn’t catch him before the rape.

Four weeks before the crime, Portillo-Saravia was in the Loudoun County jail for public intoxication. That’s when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program, called Secure Communities, should have identified him as an illegal immigrant and he should have been taken into custody.

Loudoun authorities ran Portillo-Saravia’s fingerprints through a federal database, but despite the 2003 deportation, nothing was found. He was released after 12 hours behind bars.

To read more click here.

At a press conference Friday , John Perren, acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said he believes the person has a grievance against the Marine Corps, but not those serving in uniform.

WASHINGTON — Though it may not be nearly as perplexing as the D.C. sniper case of 2002, authorities are trying to figure out who has been shooting at buildings in Northern Virginia. All the shootings have happened overnight.

FBI's John Perren

On Thursday, the FBI confirmed that a shooting this week at a vacant Marine Corps recruiting office in Fairfax County is linked to shootings earlier this month at the Pentagon and the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the Washington Post reports. Unlike the sniper case, no one has been hurt.

The Post reported that ballistic tests of bullets found at the scene point to the same weapon.

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WASHINGTON — A 20-year-old Virginia man, who made threats against the TV show “South Park”, was arrested Wednesday on charges of providing material support to al Shabaab, a terrorist organization in Somalia with links to al Qaeda, authorities said.

Zachary Adam Chesser, 20, of Fairfax County, Va., who according to a report in the Washington Post, was a high school football player and rowed crew, told federal agents that he twice tried to travel to Somalia to join the al Shabaab as a foreign fighter, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria said.

He was not charged for his online posting in April that said the creators of the TV show “South Park” risked death by mocking the Prophet Muhammad, according to the Associated Press

By Allan Lengel

WASHINGTON — Under the category of “What’s Wrong With This Picture?”, an anger management counselor was in federal court Thursday for allegedly pulling a gun on two deputy U.S. Marshals in Northern Virginia over a parking flap, the Washington Post reports.

The Post’s Tom Jackman reports that a federal judge ordered Jose L. Avila, 57, who is also a domestic violence counselor, held without bond pending a detention hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He has been in the Fairfax County Jail since Jan. 25.

Avila, a former priest, encountered the deputy marshals outside a apartment complex in Annandale in Fairfax County, a suburb of Washington.

To read the full story click here.

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