News Releases and Statements

The repatriation included myriad artifacts, such as ancient books and manuscripts, coins, paintings, statues and sculptures, an ammonite fossil and a Greco-Roman bronze helmet.

According to court documents, Vint Wade, 65, and Donna Wade, 67, of Moab, Utah; Steven Willing, 67, of Los Angeles, California; and Jordan Willing, 40 of Ashland, Oregon, committed several felony offenses against the United States by violating the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.

Experts at the University of California, Los Angeles determined the item to be an ancient ceremonial drinking vessel originating in Argentina. A pre-Columbian art expert revealed the artifact was a genuine antiquity and dated it to be between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. The piece belongs to the Condorhuasi-Alamito or Aguada cultures in present-day northwest Argentina.

The antiquities were stolen in 2008 from a private collection and museum in Cuatro Cienegas, Coahuila, Mexico.

The fossils were recovered through HSI investigations conducted by our offices in Arizona, New York, and Wyoming, and the collection was represented by a tyrannosaurus bataar skull, protoceratops fossil, alioramus skull, and saurolophus skull.

ICE Deputy Director and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director Patrick J. Lechleitner traveled to Rome to repatriate an original edition of a stolen 15th century Columbus letter to Italian officials on July 19. HSI had collaborated with international partners and subject matter experts since September 2011 on this multifaceted international investigation.

HSI New York Special Agent in Charge Ivan J. Arvelo and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams announced June 22 that the United States filed and settled a civil forfeiture action against $12 million derived from the sale of stolen Southeast Asian antiquities by indicted antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford. 

This return of these ancient coins was made possible by the investigative efforts of HSI Chicago, HSI’s Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities (CPAA) program, and law enforcement partners at CBP.

HSI Newark and representatives from HSI's CPAA program; DOS; and CBP conducted a repatriation ceremony April 25, 2023, hosted by the Bulgarian ambassador, to return ancient coins and other miscellaneous materials seized by U.S. law enforcement officials to the Bulgarian government.

HSI International Operations Deputy Assistant Director Ricardo Mayoral and H.E. Mr. Marios Lysiotis, ambassador of Cyprus at the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in Washington D.C., sign a certificate of transfer for Cypriot pottery during a repatriation ceremony April 20, 2023.

DHS and ICE's HSI, alongside partners with the U.S. Departments of Justice, Commerce, Treasury, and State announced today several international actions against Nazem Ahmad, an individual sanctioned by the United States under the GTSR for his involvement with the terrorist organization Hizballah, as well as against several other individuals involved in Ahmad’s global criminal organization, that utilized a web of businesses to benefit Ahmad and helped him to continue to provide Hizballah access to U.S. and international financial markets.

In the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, the CPAA program repatriated more than 135 artifacts to multiple nations.

The artifacts included 64 relief carved stone heads, a bronze inscribed bowl, a stone Funerary Stele from around the 1st century BCE, and 11 pages from an 8th century Quran.

A painting stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art 37 years ago has been brought back home due in large part by the careful and meticulous planning by special agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in coordination with university police.

The Durga Stele was returned during a repatriation ceremony Aug 24 attended by Nepal’s Acting Consul General, Bishnu Gautam, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York Acting Deputy Special Agent in Charge Mike Alfonso.

On Aug. 8, Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Ricky J. Patel, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York, announced the return of 30 antiquities to the Kingdom of Cambodia, which were stolen as part of an organized looting network and sold by antiquities dealer, Douglas Latchford.

ICE's HSI Detroit repatriated two ammonite fossils to Madagascar April 4.

The artifacts were transferred from HSI to Honorable Phillippe Etienne, Ambassador of France to the United States, during a repatriation ceremony at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. Among the repatriated artifacts were a gold coin (3rd century) and five gold ingots (18th century), recovered from the ocean floor where they had remained for centuries, and a human skull (18th century) that was stolen from Paris’ catacombs.

There were 28 suspected Pre-Columbian stones and one piece of wooden art identified after a CBP inspection of an incoming ferry boat. Experts from the Puerto Rico Archeological Department indicated that some of the artifacts belonged to the Taino Indian culture and were considered archaeological objects.

One of the artifacts is a partial cuneiform stone tablet. Experts say it is thousands of years old and may have left the country during looting at the start of the 20th century.

Among the repatriated artifacts were six large funerary urns (circa 900-1700 A.D.); a comb-impressed red slip double cup vessel (circa 800-1500 A.D.); a high-necked polychrome pot (circa 1100-1400 A.D.); and 913 ground and flax stones and axe heads from the Neolithic Period.   

The “Gilgamesh Dream Tablet,” originated in what is now modern-day Iraq and entered the United States in violation of federal law. An international auction house (the “Auction House”) later sold the tablet to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (“Hobby Lobby”), an arts-and-crafts retailer based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for display at the Museum of the Bible.

In May 2017, the Ministry of Culture notified HSI Bangkok that two stolen sandstone lintels, from Khmer era sanctuaries, were exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. A lintel is an architectural support and artistic element of a structure which is placed over a doorway or window. The artifacts were stolen from northeastern Thailand sometime during the late 1950s or early 1960s. 

The return of the lintels to Thailand marks the culmination of a three-year probe by HSI Bangkok, HSI San Francisco, and subsequent prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Calif., that resulted in the City of San Francisco’s forfeiture of the sacred artifacts that had been on exhibit at the city’s Asian Art Museum.

The pieces include stone arrowheads, knife blades and tools that were illegally imported into the United States from Mexico and offered for sale. The pre-Hispanic period refers to the time before the Spanish conquests in the Western Hemisphere.