Over the last two years, as discussion about illegal immigration has heated up, one term has been cropping up again and again in conversations: MS-13. What is MS-13?
For the uninitiated, MS-13 stands for “Mara Salvatrucha [13]” — the name of an El Salvador-affiliated, transnational criminal gang that the U.S. Treasury Department has said is as important as the Japanese Yakuza or the Italian Camorra Mafia in terms of its sophistication and financial connections.
Alarmingly, this gang, which boasts as many as 70,000 members worldwide, is known to be even more violent and less concerned with its public profile than those other organizations. Like the Yakuza, many MS-13 members are covered with tattoos, but in the case of MS-13, many of those tattoos are in very visible areas, including many on members’ faces, making them visible to both members of the public and law enforcement; such is the boldness and apparent unconcern for their own welfare among the group’s associates.
MS-13’s crimes include drug trafficking, prostitution, extortion and gun-running, among numerous other offenses. Members typically are not afraid to respond extremely violently to any perceived provocation or offense, including to innocent people wearing the wrong colors anywhere in their “territory” or to the smoking of marijuana. In this way, they are similar to the “Crips” or the “Bloods” street gangs that grew out of Los Angeles (where MS-13 also has a significant presence).
On New York’s Long Island, more than a dozen brutal murders of young people in the last year, including at least nine teenagers, has shocked close-knit communities, many of whom are Latino and composed of immigrants, both legal and illegal. MS-13 has traditionally preyed upon illegals, both as victims and for its recruitment efforts, as illegals have much more to lose if they report anything to the police. As such, they’re vulnerable to the efforts of gangs like MS-13 to force them to take part in crimes or use them as income sources.
“They extort them. They rob them. They rape them. They murder them,” said Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. MS-13 has actually codified these practices in a macabre method they call “La Programma,” or “The Program,” which is designed to discourage victims from informing and/or joining competing gangs. In fact, the gang’s motto is “Mata, roba, viola, controla,” or “kill, steal, rape, control.”
In a number of the Long Island cases, the victims who were killed (some of whom were found tortured, decapitated and/or dismembered) were not affiliated with the gang; they may have offended the wrong person simply by wearing the wrong item of clothing in a certain neighborhood or by saying the wrong thing about the wrong person. Two of the gang’s victims’ bodies in Virginia were too mutilated to allow identification.
The murders have terrified school administrators, parents and youngsters, some of whom say they’re powerless to respond to MS-13, even though they know in many cases who the culprits are. The young age of many of MS-13’s newest illegal members is due in large part to a flow of unaccompanied children (UAC) allowed into the country by former President Obama.
Since President Trump’s push to crack down on illegal immigration began, dealing with MS-13 has been an especially high priority. On July 28, the President made a visit to Long Island and spoke to law enforcement officials at the site of some of the gang’s killings in Brentwood. He called the murderers “animals” who spread fear throughout immigrant neighborhoods.
“MS-13 is particularly violent. They don’t like shooting people because it’s too quick. It’s too fast,” President Trump said. “I was reading one of these animals was caught and [was] explaining they like to knife them and cut them and let them die slowly because that way it’s more painful. And they enjoy watching that much more. These are animals.”
“Together, we’re going to restore safety to our streets and peace to our communities, and we’re going to destroy the vile criminal cartel MS-13 and many other gangs,” the president vowed. “From now on, we’re going to enforce our laws, protect our borders and support our police like our police have never been supported before.”
President Trump criticized local politicians who were ignorant of the extent of the problems. “I’ve met police that are great police that aren’t allowed to do their job because they have a pathetic mayor or a mayor who doesn’t know what’s going on… Failure to enforce our immigration laws had predictable results — drugs, gangs and violence — but that’s all changing now under the Trump administration.” The President specifically singled out sanctuary cities, where police are instructed not to ask about a detainee’s immigration status, as part of the problem.
One such city is Los Angeles, where in May, federal officials led operations to raid 50 known MS-13 locations and arrested some two dozen high-ranking members of MS-13, along with members of the Mexican Mafia. The operations were described as “the largest gang raid in Los Angeles history,” capping a three-year investigation, according to the FBI.
The MS-13 members were charged with Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act violations for ordering lower-ranking members to commit crimes up to and including murder. “This gang is responsible for murders — both of rival gangsters and innocent bystanders — as well as drug dealing and extortion in many communities in the Los Angeles area… With thousands of members here in the Southland, the gang’s power is widespread — power which it maintains with severe acts of violence,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown.
In Brentwood, President Trump also reminded Long Island residents about his southern border wall, which has now been granted $1.6 billion in funding by the House of Representatives; Senate approval is still required before the government can begin construction efforts. “We’ll build a good wall. We’re going to build a real wall,” Trump stated. “We’re going to build a wall that works, and it’s going to have a huge impact on the inflow of drugs coming across.”
President Trump also promised to increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to deal with needed deportation efforts. Currently, the number of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers is 5,000, but the White House has said it hopes to add 10,000 to that number. “5,000 is not going to do it,” said one White House official. “15,000 is the bare minimum [required].”
ICE is also planning a nationwide roundup of 16- and 17-year-olds who have gang tattoos, wear gang apparel and frequent known gang locations. An FBI assistant director in New York explained that MS-13 members are “typically much younger than those connected to other street gangs.” They take “cues from the gang instead of relying on a productive family structure. Also, those emigrating from El Salvador to the United States are known to be exposed and desensitized to extreme violence at an early age.”
In April, Trump administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions read a warning to MS-13 members, saying, “The MS-13 motto is kill, rape and control. I have a message to the gangs that are targeting our young people: we are targeting you. We are coming after you.” To that end, Sessions recently visited San Salvador in El Salvador to meet with law enforcement partners from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador itself, including the president of El Salvador, Sánchez Cerén.
The Salvadoran government recently arrested 113 members of MS-13 and has committed to working with the U.S. to jail gang members who originally fled the country for the United States, where they committed crimes and are awaiting deportation. In some cases, witnesses to specific crimes will be flown to El Salvador to testify in court cases there.
Although it appears that at least on Long Island and in Los Angeles, authorities are taking action against MS-13, this story is not yet in its last chapter. Much more work needs to be done on immigration, deportation and the arrest of anyone connected to MS-13; only then can the streets of many of America’s immigrant communities return to the state they were in before this loathsome criminal scourge arrived.
