This is what law and order looks like.
FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday spent part of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee celebrating the bureau’s capture of all 10 figures who were on the bureau’s “10 Most Wanted Fugitives” list when President Donald Trump was sworn in as president.
And it beat the Biden administration’s record by a long shot.
According to Fox News, Patel was receiving compliments at the hearing’s beginning from Sen. Chuck Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator who chairs the committee.
Grassley praised the FBI for capturing nine of the 10 most wanted fugitives who were on the list when Patel’s tenure began in February 2025, according to Fox, but Patel noted a small correction.
“Mr. Chairman, I’m proud to announce today, and I hate to correct you, we haven’t captured nine of the top 10 most [wanted] individuals on our list. We’ve captured 10,” Patel said.
10 of 10.
The FBI has now captured TEN Top 10 Most Wanted fugitives — more than 2.5X the prior administration — along with six of the world’s most wanted fraudsters.
The worst of the worst can run. They cannot hide.
This FBI is delivering results. pic.twitter.com/ODiZp3AYU1
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 15, 2026
“Just this past weekend, we captured a thug down in Venezuela who was on our ‘Most Wanted List’ and on the run for years. He has been captured, apprehended, and is on his way back to the United States of America.
“That’s 10 of 10. Nobody in FBI history has done that.”
And that “nobody” includes the previous administration’s FBI, which spent so much time investigating Trump supporters, conservative Catholics, and Trump himself.
Patel was not exaggerating when he said the FBI during the Trump years has “captured more than two-and-a-half times the number of the top 10 most-wanted fugitives on the FBI’s list from the prior administration.”
In a March 2025 piece comparing the effectiveness of the FBI under Trump and former President Joe Biden, Newsweek reported that even at that early date, Trump’s FBI had captured three individuals from the “Most Wanted” list.
In all four years of the Biden presidency, the bureau captured only four of the “Most Wanted,” according to the report.
The list is not set in stone, of course. As fugitives on it are arrested, others eventually take their place, and it’s held more than 500 names since it was established in 1950.
Patel did not identify the No. 10 fugitive who was arrested, but Fox reported it was Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre.
According Aguirre’s the FBI’s biography of Aguirre posted before his capture, the Venezuelan national was “wanted for allegedly leading a large international conspiracy that deploys numerous crews to the United States to steal millions of dollars from financial institutions in support of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang, a designated foreign terrorist organization which originated in Venezuela and now operates throughout Latin America and the United States.”
“Since at least January of 2024, Canelon Aguirre and other members of the conspiracy are alleged to have unlawfully enriched themselves by committing ATM jackpotting, a scheme where malware is installed on ATMs to force the unauthorized withdrawal of cash, after which the stolen cash flows through a complex money laundering network.”
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