Federal Prosecutor’s Office Shares Results of Operation Guardian Angel Wednesday

LOS ANGELES (KEYT) – Federal prosecutors are celebrating the success of Operation Guardian Angel, a federal program implemented last year to undermine California's immigration policies, Wednesday.

According to the First Assistant's Office for the Central District of California, the program has resulted in the transfer of 362 people from county detention facilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties into federal custody.

The six counties that make up the Central District are home to an estimated 1.5 million people in the country unlawfully the federal prosecutor's office shared.

Operation Guardian Angel is part of the U.S. Department of Justice's nationwide initiative, Operation Take Back America, authorized by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in March of last year.

"Operation Guardian Angel is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, to achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations, and to protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime," stated a press release Monday from the federal prosecutor's office.

Following the passage of SB 54, also known as the California Values Act, in 2017, state and local law enforcement agencies are prohibited from conducting federal immigration enforcement and limited in their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement actions, including the transfer of immigrants already in custody.

Since the beginning of Operation Guardian Angel in May of last year, 769 arrest warrants have been issued, leading to the transfer of 362 people into federal custody, of which 347 have been charged at the federal level for unlawfully reentering the country detailed the First Assistant's Office for the Central District of California.

"Broken California 'sanctuary state' policies endanger the public and cannot go unchallenged by the federal government," said First Assistant for the Central District of California Bill Essayli. "Operation Guardian Angel is an answer to these misguided policies. Through this task force we are forcing California to do the thing it hates most: handing hundreds of criminal illegal aliens into federal custody to face justice and deportation."

The federal prosecutor's office provided six specific cases connected to Operation Guardian Angel within their six-county jurisdiction including two cases in the Central Coast region.

Hector Bueno-Moreno, 55, of San Luis Obispo was removed to Mexico in September of 2025 after pleading guilty to improper entry by an alien shared the federal prosecutor's office.

The 55-year-old was arrested by the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office on a bench warrant out of Santa Barbara County and had a 1995 conviction for rape in Kern County added the First Assistant's Office for the Central District of California.

Alejandro Lima Ramírez, also known as 'Fidel Garcia Vasquez', 46, of Santa Maria, was transferred to federal custody last year by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office after he was arrested for drug-related violations detailed the federal prosecutor's office.

He is currently serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison and pled guilty in October 2025 to being unlawfully in the country after being removed four prior times noted federal prosecutors.

"California's politicians are forcing local law enforcement agencies to release criminal illegal aliens back into our communities to create more American victims," argued Thomas Giles the Director of U.S. Immigration and Custom's Enforcement's Los Angeles Field Office for Enforcement and Removal Operations. "Our partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office here in the Central District of California through Operation Guardian Angel allows us to keep rapists, gang members, and murderers, who shouldn't be in the U.S. at all, off the streets of California. We will not be deterred. We are not going away. We will continue to enforce the laws passed by the people's representatives in Congress here in California and everywhere in the United States."