Salvadoran gang becomes major U.S. crime scourge

[BEER980]

Looks like these guys are getting some press lately. This is a growing problem that could be headed to your town soon.

Salvadoran gang becomes major U.S. crime scourge
17 Jan 2005 13:00:42 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - In the past decade, a youth gang with its origins in El Salvador has established a major criminal presence in the United States, bringing a new level of violence and brutality to towns and cities across the nation.

MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, had its roots in El Salvador during the bloody civil conflict that tore that country apart in the 1980s. Many of its members, then teen-agers, received military training in that war. Some fled as refugees to the United States, where the gang gained strength.

U.S. law enforcement agencies began noticing the gang in the mid-1990s in places like Long Island, southern California and Washington D.C. They were distinguished even then by their propensity for extreme violence, often favoring the use of machetes to attack their victims.

"We've been dealing with them since around 1996. Right now, we've identified around 700 members just in this town but there are probably another 700 we don't know about," said Detective Ricky Smith, a member of the police anti-gang unit in Hempstead, New York who is a leading U.S. expert on the gang.

"They are very violent, constantly involved in homicides, assaults, drive-by shootings and extortion rackets on local businesses. They are responsible for almost all the murders we have here," Smith said.

The gang's name is loosely translated as the "wild Salvadorans" and the 13 in MS-13 has several explanations, including a reference to one of the gang's early enclaves around 13th Street in Los Angeles.

All this would be worrying enough for authorities but two factors make MS-13 even more of a threat. The gang maintains a major presence in several Central American countries, threatening the stability of fledgling democracies like El Salvador and Honduras.

Additionally, it is becoming more involved in smuggling illegal immigrants as well as drugs and weapons into the United States across the Canadian as well as the Mexican border.

This has raised fears that groups like al Qaeda might turn to the gang to smuggle some of its operatives into the United States. According to several reports in U.S. media but as yet officially unconfirmed, at least one senior al Qaeda figure was spotted last year meeting MS-13 members in Honduras.

"We know from El Salvadoran law enforcement that al Qaeda is meeting with violent gang leaders in El Salvador. We have also had reports that Middle Easterners have been sighted on the banks of the Rio Grande," said U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, a Texas Democrat.

A spokesman for the Department for Homeland Security said he knew of no evidence of links between MS-13 and al Qaeda.

HALF A MILLION MEMBERS

Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the growth of MS-13 could soon begin to impact public attitudes to immigration.

"MS-13 is not an example of a bunch of petty hoodlums running a numbers racket. This is a truly transnational gang that is extraordinarily brutal and dangerous," he said.

Internationally, MS-13 is believed to have possibly as many as half a million members. In Honduras last month, alleged gang members opened fire on a bus, killing 28 passengers.

Security Minister Oscar Alvarez announced in December that authorities had uncovered a plot by drug traffickers to assassinate President Ricardo Maduro and other officials.

Then, on Jan. 7, Honduran police arrested a Nicaraguan man armed with a grenade launcher and an assault rifle equipped with a tripod who had crossed the border illegally and evaded several police checkpoints. The government said he may have been hired by gangs to kill the president.

Honduras as well as El Salvador has made gang membership a crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison. But their efforts to combat the gangs are complicated by the fact that the United States routinely deports known gang members back to their homelands.

"MS-13 is the only U.S. gang with a broad international reach. They recruit kids in middle school and we are seeing not only people from Central America joining their ranks. We are also seeing Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and even white kids getting involved," said Jared Lewis, director of "Know Gangs," who runs courses for police departments on how to recognize and combat gang activity.

Andrew Grascia, a gang investigator for Westchester County, New York, said the idea of an alliance with al Qaeda was not far-fetched.

"If you look at how MS-13 is bringing narcotics as well as immigrants into this country, it would make sense for terrorists to do business with them," he said.

According to Grascia, MS-13 is spreading across the nation from its original enclaves and encroaching on the turf of other, more established gangs such as the Crips and Bloods.

"You had kids trained in guerrilla warfare from the age of 12. They never back down and other gangs are afraid to take them on," he said.
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