REPORT: Brussels police arrest Rubio security detail supervisor after hotel fight

April 8, 2025

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From the Washington Examiner: A Diplomatic Security Service shift supervisor assigned to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s protective detail was arrested by Belgian police at a Brussels hotel last Monday after arguing with hotel staff and fighting with responding police officers. Later that week, Rubio stayed in the same place, Hotel Amigo, while attending NATO’s foreign ministers meeting.

The DSS veteran, whose name the Washington Examiner is withholding, was a senior agent on the DSS advance party to Belgium. That protective advance party was responsible for securing the hotel and conducting final security preparations at the various sites in Brussels for Rubio’s visit.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told the Washington Examiner that the agent in question was behaving erratically and became irate when hotel staff refused to reopen the bar beyond its normal hours. When staff, including the night manager, attempted to persuade the agent to return to his room, the agent became physically aggressive. Police were then called. The agent engaged in an altercation with numerous police officers, leading to his arrest. The agent was released from police custody later that day after intervention by the U.S. Embassy.

Four sources told the Washington Examiner that Rubio’s protective detail is under severe strain and has been stretched to a near-breaking point by senior leadership. One source provided explicit examples of how resource stretches have led to vulnerabilities in protection. One State Department employee observed that “shift supervisors [on Rubio’s detail] have an incomprehensible workload. They are responsible for all the agents under them, scheduling, evaluations and a preposterous amount of admin work [as well as] performing the actual shift work. They work 6 to 7 days a week. I truly believe this [incident] was the result of incomprehensible strain [the agent] was placed under and, at the very least, [Diplomatic Security Service] owes [the agent] a very fair evaluation of these circumstances in their totality – looking deep into [DSS’s] own role [in what happened].”