America's Most Dangerous Gang

America's Most Dangerous Gang
by Shelly Feuer Domash

Spreading from El Salvador to L.A. and across the United States, Mara Salvatrucha 13 is increasingly well organized and deadly.

Within one hour, two people were found murdered miles apart in suburban Nassau County, N.Y. After an intensive investigation, police officials learned the murders were the work of the violent street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13. It also soon became apparent the gang was sending a bold message to its members and associates. That message: “If you are not loyal, you are dead.”

But there was another message in the brutal slayings for the people of Long Island. And that message was that gang violence had moved into the upper middle class enclaves of the Island, into the kinds of communities where the locals assume that crime is somebody else’s problem.

Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) is unfortunately becoming everybody’s problem. This plague that came to Long Island from El Salvador by way of the streets of Los Angeles follows the same migratory patterns as the Salvadoran immigrant community that it preys upon, fanning out across the United States from ethnic enclaves in California.

Until recently, MS-13 wasn’t that big a player in East Coast gang culture. The reason for its weak position in the East Coast crime world was obvious: It wasn’t very well organized. MS-13 was comprised of a group of cliques that operated independently of each other.

No more. Law enforcement officials now report that gang members from across the country have come together to unite affiliated groups up and down the East Coast. The leadership for these cliques is now coming from as far away as California and even from El Salvador.

Robert Hart, senior agent in charge with the FBI, says that when individual groups of MS-13 unite, the results can be devastating. “The cliques, instead of operating independently of each other, are beginning to come together,” Hart explains. “The difference is by doing that, obviously you have a much tighter organization, much stronger structures and, instead of having various cliques doing whatever they want, wherever they want, there is one individual who is the leader and is able to control the payment of dues and the criminal acts they engage in. The result is very, very similar to what you would see in what we refer to as traditional organized criminal families.”

Los Angeles and New York law enforcement and even politicians are aware of the impact of MS-13 on their streets and on their crime statistics. So they’ve taken action. The results are usually not stellar, but at least these cities have recognized that MS-13 is a problem. Unfortunately, the leadership of MS-13 is not stupid. Once the heat comes down hard in L.A. and New York, they head for new turf, choosing Midwestern and Southern and suburban cities where gangs “are not an issue” and local officials and authorities are in denial.

And once MS-13 takes hold in a community, it grows fast. The gang reportedly has some 300 members in suburban Long Island. A few years back it didn’t have any.

Once MS-13 shows up on the radar, some local officials and authorities will take action. In Nassau County, for example, a joint gang task force headed by the FBI and comprised of local police departments, has arrested 16 leaders of MS-13. They were charged with two murders, assault, conspiracy, and firearms violations.

Such investigations aren’t easy because MS-13 has a pretty strident zero-tolerance policy toward anyone who informs the cops of their activities.

Court papers reveal that one of the Nassau County defendants was captured in a secretly recorded telephone conversation detailing how he killed a male victim because he had provided law enforcement officials with information and that he had “put one in his chest and three in the head.” In another recorded conversation, a second defendant said he killed a young female because, in part, she had also provided information to law enforcement.

The senseless violence of MS-13 has shocked the local citizens of Nassau County, so the Nassau County Executive appointed a “gang czar” to deal with the increasing gang problem.

A seasoned, dedicated officer, the new “czar,” in reality, will find it difficult to accomplish what he has been mandated to do. His department, like many across the nation, is at its lowest staffing levels in recent history, and he has been given no additional personnel or resources to combat the problem. The public was placated by the appointment, but while politicians put Band-Aids on deep cuts, the problem continues to escalate on Long Island.

And Long Island is not alone. Nationally, police departments are dealing with the surge in violence emanating from MS-13 members.

In Charlotte, N.C., 53 gang members were arrested as part of Operation Fed Up, which targeted MS-13 members. Officials in the medium-sized Southern city say MS-13 has been involved in at least 11 murders in the Charlotte area since 2000. And with a membership estimated at 200, MS-13 is by far Charlotte’s largest gang.

Some 400 miles north of Charlotte, the northern Virginia and southern Maryland communities around Washington, D.C., have become MS-13 turf. Local authorities estimate that there are between 5,000 and 6,000 MS-13 members in the metropolitan area.

And where MS-13 goes, violence follows. In July 2003, an 18-year-old federal witness was stabbed to death; last May, a 16-year-old boy had his hands almost completely chopped off with a machete; and a week later a 17-year-old was shot and murdered. All three crimes were tied to MS-13 members.

The rapid increase in MS-13 activity along the corridor between Charlotte and D.C. is simply explained by Det. Tim Jolly, a gang specialist with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The area has the nation’s second highest population of Salvadoran immigrants.

One of the more unusual aspects of MS-13 when compared to other street gangs is that it is extremely flexible in its activity. While some gangs are only into drugs, MS-13 will do any crime at any time.

Sgt. George Norris, supervisor of the gang unit in the Prince George’s County (Md.) Police Department, says MS-13 doesn’t sling drugs in his jurisdiction. “We see mostly citizen robberies, auto theft, shootings and cuttings, and homicides,” he says, adding that drug sales by MS-13 may be just a matter of time.

When MS-13 moves into a new community it tends to announce its presence with violence. The same can be true when a new leader takes over the local cliques.

Norris says gang members from other areas had once been able to join the new gang by simply being “jumped in.” But now that new leaders have moved into Prince George’s County and consolidated the cliques, the gang’s local culture has become more violent and vicious.

“According to one of our informers, things have changed,” says Norris. “Now in order to get your letters or clique [symbols] tattooed on you, you have to also put in some violent act to show your commitment.”

And MS-13 violence is not restricted to civilians, rival gang members, and clique traitors; the gang will go after cops. Threats against police officers, known to gang members as “green light” notices, have increased so much in the past few years that the Virginia Gang Association has warned officers in Virginia and states to the north and south to be wary of MS-13 members.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly says he is aware of the threats against police officers in his community and in Virginia. Prince George’s County’s Norris says he’s heard them, too. “If you do something to them, their natural response is, ‘OK, I’m going to kill you,’” he says. “Or at least they talk like they will.”

Norris dismisses some of MS-13’s threats, but that doesn’t mean that officers should take all MS-13 threats lightly. The gang is extremely violent and it has attacked and will continue to attack anyone who gets in its way. That includes law enforcement officers.

Named for La Mara, a street in San Salvador, and the Salvatrucha guerillas who fought in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, Mara Salvatrucha 13 was organized in Los Angeles in the late ’80s. At first, the gang’s primary purpose was to defend Salvadoran immigrants from being preyed upon by other L.A. street gangs.

But like any other street gang that was created to defend a particular ethnic group, MS-13 was quickly perverted until its primary purpose was preying upon the Salvadoran community. It also violently defends its turf against any other gang that might seek to slice away a piece of its action.

Gang members sometimes wear blue and white, colors taken from the national flag of El Salvador. They can also sport numerous body and even face tattoos. However, some members are much less visible and therefore much more dangerous.

Recent reports indicate that MS-13 has expanded from California to Alaska, Oregon, Utah, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Florida. The gang has also been exported back to Central America.

It’s estimated that there are 36,000 MS-13 members in Honduras alone. In Honduras, according to a March 2004 report prepared by the Washington, D.C.-based, right-wing think tank the Maldon Institute, MS-13 has, with increasing frequency, resorted to leaving a dismembered corpse, complete with a decapitated head, as a calling card. Recently, according to the report, such a grisly message was left with a note for the Honduran president.

The note is supposed to have stated the gang’s displeasure with an August 2003 law that made it illegal to be a part of a gang. Under Honduran law gang leaders can be sentenced to prison for up to 12 years and rank-and-file members from six to nine years, just for being in the gang. A gang member can be arrested for simply having a tattoo.

El Salvador has also launched a crackdown on MS-13. A police offensive called “Operation Strong-arm” has resulted in the arrest of more than 4,000 gang members.

For MS-13, these are small losses. The gang is nothing if not mobile. When it feels heat in the U.S., it moves to another state. When it feels heat in El Salvador and Honduras, it sets up operations in Mexico.

The Maldon Institute report indicates that MS-13 “appears to be in control of much of the Mexican border and, in addition to its smuggling and contraband rackets, the gang collects money from illegal immigrants that it helps [move] across the border into the United States.”

The ultra-conservative Maldon Institute is known for doomsday predictions when it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border. But there can be no denial that MS-13 is very active in smuggling people, drugs, and guns across the border. And independent reports indicate that many illegal immigrants have been assaulted, robbed, and even raped by MS-13 members.

Mexico is now taking steps to fight back against MS-13. In December, Mexican authorities arrested 224 gang members in response to what they called a threat to national security. Among the arrests were members of MS-13 who were charged with trafficking in drugs and firearms across Mexico and Central America.

While some of the Central American countries appear to be cracking down on MS-13, serious problems still exist. And they are being missed by politically correct reporters who want to tout U.S.-Latin American cooperation.

For example, on Long Island, the media was quick to cover an agreement between El Salvador and Suffolk County to share information on MS-13. What the local reporters didn’t cover was a much more serious issue. If these gang members commit serious offenses, they can return home, and there is no extradition agreement. And, of course, they are doing so in increasing numbers.

“I would say that between Honduras and El Salvador, there are seven or eight people we are seeking to take into custody,” says Lt. Dennis Farrell, head homicide investigator for the Nassau County Police Department. “Proportionally, if you take that across the country, the numbers are astronomical, the number of people who have probably fled to these two countries.”

Farrell says that two gang members who his detectives are looking to arrest for two separate murders are now living in the same town in El Salvador. He calls the situation extremely frustrating. “You undertake a very in-depth and comprehensive investigation, pursue all possible leads, build a case, essentially conduct a successful investigation, only to have it thwarted by the fact that after having identified the killer or killers, you are unable, under the present international agreements, to return them to Nassau County to face murder charges.

“Even more than that frustration, how about the injustice and sense of desperation on the part of families who have lost loved ones? Where is the measure of justice? There is really no justice for those families, and absent some reworked or new initiative between our state department and those sovereign states, I don’t see any change in this condition in the foreseeable future,” Farrell adds.

In addition to extradition treaties, many gang investigators believe stricter and more uniform laws are needed here in this country. According to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s Jolly, one of the reasons MS-13 has migrated to the East Coast is the strict anti-gang laws on the West Coast. He also believes that, with the stricter gang laws in Central America, many MS-13 members may be coming back to the United States illegally.

With the number of MS-13 members growing nationwide (some cliques now even accept non-Hispanic members), and the violence escalating, the future for law enforcement appears grim.

“They adapt to what the police do,” says Prince George’s County’s Norris. “They will change the way they operate, depending on the way things are enforced by the police. If there is no enforcement, they will wear their colors and bandanas because in the communities they are in it is common knowledge and the people fear them, so it is a form of intimidation.

“Once the police recognize and confront them, they will change and wear different colors from the blue and white, no bandana on their head, maybe now in their pocket, and instead of the number 13 they will wear 67 or 76 because it equals 13. They adapt so it is a continually evolving thing.”

While the nation focuses on terrorism, the issue of gang violence has taken a lower priority. But to many, the violent acts of MS-13 members are more of an everyday threat that is being overlooked.

======================================

Mara Salvatrucha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from Mara Salvatrucha (MS, MS-13))

Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, MS,

In the early 1980s, a violent civil war began in El Salvador which would last more than 12 years. Approximately 100,000 people were killed in the war, and more than one million people fled from El Salvador to the U.S. The Salvadorian refugees and immigrants initially settled primarily in southern California and Washington, D.C.

Some of the refugees and immigrants had ties with 'La Mara', a violent street gang from El Salvador. Others had been members of paramilitary groups like the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) during the civil war. FMNL was made up of Salvadorian peasants who were trained as guerilla fighters. Many were adept at using explosives, firearms, and booby traps.

Most of the Salvadorian refugees settled in the established Hispanic neighborhoods of the "Rampart" area of Los Angeles. However, Salvadorians were not readily accepted into the Los Angeles Hispanic community, and were frequently targeted by local Hispanic gangs. As a result, in the late 1980s, some refugees and refugee members of La Mara and FMNL formed what is now known as the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) street gang in Los Angeles. Like many other street gangs, MS initially formed for protection, but quickly developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent. MS membership continues to be fed by refugees from groups like FMNL.

Since its inception in California and Washington, DC, Mara Salvatrucha has expanded into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Canada, and Mexico. MS is unique in that, unlike traditional U.S. street gangs, it maintains active ties with MS members and factions in El Salvador. Mara Salvatrucha is literally an international gang.

Mara Salvatrucha gang members maintain contact between groups in the United States and El Salvador for several specific reasons. In El Salvador, a hand grenade sells for $1.00-$2.00 U.S. currency and an M-16 rifle will sell for approximately $200.00-$220.00 U.S. dollars. This communication and alliance provides a mechanism for MS gang members to access military-style munitions and also establishes a network to traffic illegal firearms into the United States.

Although military weapons seem to be readily available to this gang, street intelligence indicates they often have difficulty obtaining handguns, which are not readily available in El Salvador. This creates a demand for small arms by MS members in the U.S. and El Salvador. This demand is so high that MS members will often take handguns as payment for drug transactions. The guns are then sent back to El Salvador, or used in the United States.

MS is also involved in exporting stolen U.S. cars to South America. The cars are often traded for drugs when dealing with cartels. It is estimated that 80% of the cars driven in El Salvador were stolen in the United States. Car theft is a lucrative business for MS.

The Mara Salvatrucha gang is involved in a variety of criminal enterprises. As with members of other gangs, MS members seem willing to commit almost any crime, but MS gang members tend to have a higher level of criminal involvement than other gang members. MS members have been involved in burglaries, auto thefts, narcotic sales, home invasion robberies, weapons smuggling, car jacking, extortion, murder, rape, witness intimidation, illegal firearm sales, car theft and aggravated assaults. In terms of drug trafficking activities, common drugs sold by MS members include cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine. Mara Salvatrucha gang members have even placed a “tax” on prostitutes and non-gang member drug dealers who are working in MS "turf." Failure to pay up will most likely result in violence.

Originally, only Salvadorians could become members of Mara Salvatrucha. However, MS now includes members from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Mara Salvatrucha also has a few African-American members. MS has broken the race barrier for membership, but most new members are still selected because of their ethnic (Central American) background. The majority of MS gang members are between the ages of 11 and 40 years old.

Mara Salvatrucha members identify themselves with tattoos such as the number “13," or trece in Spanish. MS gang members will also use the Spanish word sureño, meaning "southerner" to identify themselves. Sometimes sureño is abbreviated to SUR. These terms make reference to the fact that MS gang members like to claim they are from southern California as opposed to northern California, and are rivals with northern California gangs. Often, this rivalry is taken outside the state of California. Additionally, Mara Salvatrucha gang members have several ongoing rivalries with large southern California gangs, including the 18th Street gang, and in California, commonly attack 18th Street gang members on sight. There are many Hispanic gangs, including MS, which use the number “13," and the terms sureno and SUR as identifiers, including street/prison gangs outside of California. Thus, it is important to identify specific tattoos used by the Mara Salvatrucha gang, which include “M” or “MS,” in addition to the 13 or SUR identification. Another common tattoo seen is “Salvadorian Pride.” There is also a good chance that the member will also have the name of his particular clique tattooed on his/her body. Other tattoos encountered with MS members have included pentagrams and other occult symbols. These can be confusing when found in conjunction with gang tattoos and can cause misconceptions of Satanic involvement by the gang. The most common hand sign used by MS members is the letter M formed by using three fingers and pointing the hand downward. This handsign can resemble the pitchfork sign used by Folk/People Nation gangs from the Midwest, and can be made with the fingers pointing up or down. The symbols used as tattoos are also used in graffiti and personal writings.

In general, Mara Salvatrucha members show no fear of law enforcement. They are not easily intimidated and frequently act defiantly. Mara Salvaltrucha gang members have been responsible for the execution of three federal agents and numerous shootings of law enforcement officers across the country. MS gang members have been known to booby-trap their drug stash houses using antipersonnel grenades on the assumption that these structures will be searched by law enforcement. MS members at one time often bragged of assaulting law enforcement officers as a means of showing their loyalty and commitment to the gang. However, these claims have never been confirmed. Today, assaults on law enforcement officers are not required for membership, but are always an option. Thus, officers dealing with MS members (or any street gang members, for that matter) should always use extreme caution.

Law enforcement and the courts have used two primary methods to deal with criminal activity by MS: arrest/incarceration and deportation. Between April 1994 and August 1995, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) arrested and deported more than 100 MS gang members to El Salvador. Many Mara Salvatrucha gang members are currently in the United States illegally and are concerned about deportation. If a gang member is deported to El Salvador, there is a chance they will be targeted by the Sombra Negra (Black Shadow) death squad. Sombra Negra and similar groups are legendary in Central America. Gangsters and citizens alike believe that the Sombra Negra is made up of rogue cops and military personnel who target unwanted criminals and gang members for vigilante "justice." While the presence of these death squads is officially denied by the governments of Central American countries, many MS members in the U.S. believe these groups exist, and fear that they will be targeted after being deported. Honduran MS gang members have the same fear. Sombra Negra has claimed responsibility for the deaths of several MS gang members in El Salvador. The existence or belief in the existence of these death squads could also be a chief motivation for hardcore MS gang members to come to the United States.

Bush's Open Borders

NOTE: The following information is the product of a research group. Although it appears to be accurate and thorough, law enforcement sources may disagree with portions of the content.

A dismembered body of an adolescent male was found in northern Honduras, at the end of February 2004 together with a message for Honduran President Ricardo Maduro. The message warned that if the government continued to target street gangs, 'more people will die. This is another challenge ' the next victims will be police and journalists.'

Two weeks after his inauguration in January, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger received a similar message on a note attached to the body of a dismembered dead man.

Both messages were signed �Mara Salvatrucha 13� (MS13), the name shared by the largest group of criminal street gangs in the United States and Central America. These gangs are called 'Maras' after an ant that attacks in swarms and devours everything in its path. It originated among Salvadoran emigrants in Los Angeles some 19 years ago in the mid-1980s. The name 'Salvatrucha' loosely refers to 'Salvadoran guerrillas' or fighters. The number '13' is considered a 'good luck' number. In just under two decades, the Maras have proliferated throughout Central America and have moved into many cities in the United States and Canada.

In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines a �violent street gang� as a �criminal enterprise having an organizational structure, acting as a continuing criminal conspiracy, which employs violence and any other criminal activity to sustain the enterprise.�

Mara Salvatrucha 13 falls within this definition. Numbering more than 250,000 gang members in Central America and significant numbers in the tens of thousands in the United States, it has created an international group of criminals within the country. Many of these are second generation illegal immigrants, male, mostly over the age of 11 but generally under 21.

In the Los Angeles area, there are said to be at least 10,000 MS13 members with 95 percent of the homicide arrest warrants against them still outstanding. In Northern Virginia there are 3,500 MS13 members reported by the police, with a concentration of 1,500 in Fairfax County alone. Research for this report has established significantly large MS13 gang concentrations in 15 states and some Canadian cities.

A Fairfax County police official said of MS13, 'We know it is a losing battle. When we run them out of here, we just move them to another location. We just contain what we have. We know we can't get rid of them.'

The National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) has noted the following information through the review of survey responses received from 301 law-enforcement agencies throughout the country: Hispanic gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha 13 and its offshoots were reported in 167 jurisdictions in 41 states and make up 29 percent of all gangs reported within the continental United States.

NOTE: The numbers given in this report of 'gangstas' are spectacular. They were taken from international, national and domestic police reports and the media. We believe them to be good estimates but they ignore the mobility and cross-border nature of the problems. In Central America, as elsewhere not every member of a gang is a killer, many just 'hang out,' and do odd jobs of a non-criminal nature for their gang leaders in the villages and barrios where they live. However, every one of them has to be considered potentially armed, dangerous and capable of committing brutal murders.

The story of Mara Salvatrucha 13 is inevitably also the story of El Salvador and the results of its twelve-year civil war. From 1980 until 1992, the fighting between the Salvadoran government and the communist rebels claimed over 75,000 lives and sent more than one million refugees and immigrants to the United States and to its neighbors throughout Central America. In the United States, most of the Salvadoran expatriates initially settled in one of two areas, concentrating either in Los Angeles or in Northern Virginia.

In Los Angeles, the Salvadorans settled in the Rampart area and were rejected as outsiders by the local Hispanic [Chicano or second and third generation Mexican American] community. They were often the targets of Latino and black street gangs. In response, some of the Salvadorans began to form their own gangs for self-protection. These new protective gangs were not dissimilar in their origins to those of many other ethnicities who have emigrated in waves and experienced similarly directed violence ' the Germans, Irish, Italians, Chinese and many others. The Salvadoran gangs found what they were seeking ' instant street protection and respect, an alternative caring 'family' and financial security. The costs were carried by an alien society who had refused to accept them.

The act of emigration itself combined with the ethnic concentration in Los Angeles meant that a self-selecting group had risen to power to form the 'protection' for the whole. Some arrived in the United States having had ties to La Mara, a violent street gang in El Salvador. Many had actually seen fighting in El Salvador's civil war. Exmembers of the paramilitary Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) [Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front] also numbered among the early founders of Mara Salvatrucha. The FMLN had fought an insurgency against the Salvadoran government, using guerilla tactics and urban terrorism, and as a result many Salvadorans arrived in Los Angeles as 'veterans,' already adept in the use of explosives, firearms and booby traps.

The development of the MS in El Salvador and Central America is said to have been an unforeseen consequence of the Rodney King riots of 1990 in Los Angeles. In the wake of these riots, a task force was formed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which deported at least 1,000 MS members to El Salvador. There were many other unnumbered 'voluntary departures.' In San Salvador, the MS cadre had two ambitions ' first, to become involved in a criminal enterprise and become financially secure; second, to return to the United States.

Those that remained or returned to the United States wanted financial security, respect based on fear from their immediate community and power. To achieve this, MS has had to eliminate or control other ethnic gangs, with Mexican criminal groups being a major and continuing target.

Since its inception, MS has expanded beyond its 'hubs' of Los Angeles and Northern Virginia, though its numbers in these cities continue to grow at alarming rates. Nationwide, however, MS has expanded into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia and Florida. They also are spreading in Canada and Mexico. Some reports place MS 'cliques'[sub-units of gang members] in 49 states ' with Hawaii escaping the infestation to date.

This simple gang-clique structure essentially comprises the entirety of the formal Mara Salvatrucha 13 organization. In Virginia, for example, it is known that MS members attend monthly gang meetings, and then once a month [generally on a Saturday] also attend a separate clique meeting. These smaller 'cliques' can range in size from a dozen to 80 members, and each will feature its own distinct name. The actual nickname given to a member is usually based on his clique membership.

The straightforward, fundamental approach to 'organizing' a gang has many advantages and may in fact have its roots in advice brought back from FMLN experience and training provided by the Cuban Direcci'n General de Inteligencia (DGI) [Main Directorate of Intelligence]. This apparent simplicity combined with the almost unrivalled brutality of MS13 should not lead to any false conclusions regarding a lack of sophistication. To the contrary, the simple nature of the organization lends itself well to flexibility, and the wide geographic distribution of the cliques also has resulted in an extensive range of options available from the collective talent pool. By some accounts, many cliques 'specialize' in a field or 'occupation,' from the street-level professions of car jacking and narcotics sales, to computer hacking, wire fraud and other similar 'white collar' crimes. Recently, truck hijacking has become popular with MS13. For example, a truck loaded with nationally advertised toilet articles or paper products can be hijacked by a clique and 'redistributed' to a network of corner stores owned and operated by Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants. Sold at heavily discounted prices, the MS13 thieves have quickly earned the Robin Hood label of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

An additional and perhaps inevitable consequence of the scale of the MS13 phenomenon is the extent to which they adeptly use computers and other technology, much like any other large organization. Dealers, car jackers and lookouts carry wireless phones, pagers, radios and police scanners. Virtual communications suites are publicly available, and it is possible that MS has access to the type of electronics and communications advice on which they may have received training in the past for paramilitary endeavors.

On the internet, MS13 is not hard to find. Their unabashed contempt for most authorities is reinforced in the photographs they post on their own websites, hailing their achievements against the police, taunting rivals or simply speaking in bravado-soaked language to communicate with one another. These are hi-tech gangs who e-mail, instant message and use online chat rooms ' interactions that are perfectly normal to their generation of gang members. However, there does not yet appear to be a realization that their careless use offers an opportunity for exploitation by the law-enforcement community.

The MS13 expansion can be traced in part to the movement of the Salvadoran population throughout the United States. Often working as day laborers or in similar undocumented 'hired-help' positions, Salvadorans moved to Tennessee to help in the construction of the Titans' stadium, to Pennsylvania for work in the mushroom farms, to the Midwest for agricultural jobs and to the East and Northeast in search of unskilled factory or service-oriented work. In each instance, the gang may have been brought east from Los Angeles by teenage children or parents and then later, as they became established, developed the larger gang structure in their new communities.

In Central AmericaMS13 and its contemporaries are so prolific and brazenly aggressive against seemingly ill-fated government countermeasures as to cause the United States� gang problems to pale in comparison. There are an estimated 250,000 gang members in Central America; by contrast there are 108,000 police officers. These are official numbers resulting from a recent survey, however estimates vary considerably. Some put 80,000 gang members in Guatemala alone.

El Salvador: In El Salvador, MS13 members execute their enemies in broad daylight aboard city buses and trains, either then fighting their way out or simply walking away unmolested. The latter is often more common. Given the statistics, it is not difficult to understand why: in the first 35 days of 2004 alone, three witnesses in three different murder cases involving gangs were each killed. At least one, who had testified against MS13 in the murder case of a six-year old boy, was in turn himself gunned down.

El Salvador has attempted a political solution to MS13, with President Francisco Flores initiating the 'Mano Duro' [firm hand] law on a countrywide basis against the gangs to strong opposition from the Marxist and liberal opposition parties. Police and military teams conduct night raids in search of gang members as part of 'Mano Duro,' designed to clear the streets of any gang activity. At the time that the law was being debated President Flores said of Mara, 'If someone is against them, they identify them in the community. They come; they take them out on the street ' kill and mutilate them.'

In January 2003, Flores initiated an international agreement with Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua for cross-border 'hot pursuit' and immediate extradition of those suspected of being Mara members. This comprehensive security agreement allows au thorities to arrest suspected gang members in any of these countries, regardless of their nationality. The agreement also has established procedures for a framework of crossborder intelligence-sharing and the creation of a centralized database on the Maras.

However, presidential elections will take place this month and opposition forces are making heavy use of charges that Mano Duro encourages extra-legal forces ' in the Salvadoran case, the Sombre Negro death squads. The director of El Salvador's National Civil Police has called for the Legislative Assembly to grant immediate approval of a law to protect witnesses and victims of gang violence.

To date, 8,500 gang members have been arrested and charged under Mano Duro legislation, but only some 400 have been convicted. Salvadoran judges allege that the law is unconstitutional.

Mara�s main rivals, in El Salvador and elsewhere including the United States, are Mexican street gangs and more specifically the Mexican 18th Street gang. Several Latin American governments are said to be covertly hiring 18th Street to combat Mara. This could be one possible reason for the recent attempted assassinations of Honduras President Roberto Maduro and National Congress president Porfirio Lobo. A police official said the government has been trying to eliminate MS13 from Honduras and assassination was Mara's way of responding.

Heavily-armed Mara members have challenged government crackdowns on gangrelated violence, drug trafficking and other criminal activities. In recent months, Salvadoran police have arrested nearly 8,000 suspected Mara members and Honduran authorities have arrested more than 1,000 youths as suspected members of Mara.

Salvadoran police have attempted in recent years to intensify their efforts against the gangs, but they fail to keep pace with the criminals. El Salvador officially suffers some 10,500 gang members, according to a Central American police study conducted in the fall of 2003. Non-governmental organizations in El Salvador claim the number of gang members is closer to 30,000. Mara Salvatrucha is by far the dominant gang, not just in El Salvador, but throughout the region, which includes Guatemala and Honduras.

Honduras: Honduras faces a gang situation of nightmare proportions, and MS13 is the main problem. There are at least 36,000 gang members in Honduras. A particularly grisly Mara Salvatrucha 13 calling card has been left with increasing frequency in Honduras: a dismembered corpse, complete with decapitated head, packed into a suitcase to deliver a message, often a note. Recently the notes have consisted of warnings to the Honduran President Maduro.

The MS members arrested recently in Honduras possessed detailed information about the daily movements of both President Maduro and National Congress president Lobo. The information the police seized reportedly included the private office and home telephone numbers of officials and extensive details about the daily movements of their wives and children. Police said the plot to kill Lobo called for a gun or grenade attack in the street or in a restaurant. The MS gunmen also had detailed intelligence, which indicates the gang has achieved an extraordinary degree of organizational sophistication that normally is not found in poor Central American youth gangs. It also suggests that MS has links to larger, more experienced Colombian and Mexican crime syndicates that could be supplying the Maras with such intelligence, because recent crackdowns against the Maras also are affecting the drug-trafficking activities of the large Colombian and Mexican crime organizations.

Both Roberto Maduro and Guatemalan President Oscar Berger threaten the Colombian and Mexican syndicates, because they have vowed to root out drug-related corruption in Honduras and Guatemala.

Guatemala: Guatemala is currently undergoing efforts to reform its National Civil Police. Nevertheless, its commissioner warns that it is still rife with corrupt agents. Reforms need to be effective and swift. Guatemala has some 100,000 gang members, including MS13 and MS18, second in numerical size to Honduras.

It is well established that MS13 runs drugs, guns, stolen cars, all as contraband for sale and trade within their own network of contacts in North and South America. It is perhaps equally likely, and the belief of top law enforcement in Central America, that MS and its contemporaries are really 'the muscle' in a grander scale of operation, much of which is controlled by political figures. These would be the more usual suspects like mafias and cartels that traffic in narcotics, people and children. The use of Mara gangs as brutal hired guns presents a dilemma for Central American law enforcement who are now responding to President Maduro's statement, 'If war is what they want, war is what they will get.'

There is no anti-gang legislation in Guatamala. However, the National Progressive Party has proposed a law supporting the president's �Clean Sweep program that would incarcerate gang members from 8 to 12 years. Human rights groups claim that both convictions and Clean Sweep are uncivilized and believe that rehabilitation for gang members is necessary. To date, the Anti-Crime Alliance has returned 320 gang members to society.

Nicaragua: In Nicaragua, the activities of MS13 provide a mirror image to that found in other parts of the region, with Managua and Le'n experiencing heavy concentrations of gang activity.

Recently, Nicaragua's National Police Chief Edwin Cordero warned that MS and other Central American gangs have organized procedures for moving new recruits from Nicaragua to El Salvador and Honduras. The new recruits are trained in Mara organization and tactics and then sent home to establish new branches. Cordero also said that the Maras are combining organizational skills used by U.S. street gangs, such as the Crips and Latin Kings with indoctrination and training skills that former Central American Marxist groups Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in El Salvador ' used during the 1980s.

Mexico: Mexico is in a difficult position, both politically and geographically, when dealing with MS13. With unrest rife in the state of Chiapas and the threat of Zapatista action both a constant and substantial pressure, the Mexican government has all it can do without fending off several thousand heavily armed Salvadoran gangsters. However, Mexico can hardly turn its back on its Northern neighbor, whom they are heavily reliant, and simply ignore a steady flow through of illegal gangsters into the United States. The latter is very nearly the situation as the Mexican authorities are simply ill equipped, overwhelmed and uninterested in keeping undesirables out of the United States.

Last month in Mexico City, Federal Attorney General Rafael Maduro de la Concha told reporters that he had never heard of MS13 and that those few who were in Mexico City were �stuck there� on their way to the United States because of a lack of money.

By comparison, Chiapas State Attorney General Mariano Herr�n Salvatti has called for �head-on combat� against the Maras. Along with State Secretary for Public Security Horacio Schroeder, they have launched �Project 02� as a part of the major offensive against MS in Chiapas along the Guatemalan border. Project 02 involves the Mexican Army 4th Motorized Cavalry Regiment, the National Migration Institute, Beta Sur, the State Investigative Agency, the State Sectoral Police, Ministerial Police and Mixed Operation Units. Operations of this combined task force began in 2003, which initially received favorable media attention. However, as a result of a December execution- style death of a Honduran MS leader who was being sought by the police, attention from the press ceased.

The problem is that many Salvadorans who enter Mexico, heading north for the United States, either through a lack of funds or change of intentions, end up remaining in Mexico. Mexico appears powerless to extradite them and is equally unable to combat them on a large-scale, law-enforcement basis, or at least do so and win with measurable results. Mexico also harbors the great fear that a recent anti-gang law jointly adopted between Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador will force expatriate gang members north into Mexico. In the already unstable south, Mexico City can ill afford to counter such a move.

Mara Salvatrucha 13 appears to be in control of much of the southern Mexican border, and in addition to its smuggling and contraband rackets, collects money from illegal immigrants that it helps secrete across the border into the United States. A staging point for illegals is operated by MS13, known locally as migrant hunters, out of Chiapas, moving people and contraband into the United States before it is diverted to its final destination. For all practical purposes, MS13 has control of the railways to the North along the border, and is able to collect a tax-like fee from the precarious roofriders who risk their lives atop the trains to reach the United States.

It is reported that recruiting for MS13 among Mexican adolescents in Chiapas alone has reached the level of 700 a month.

United States: A key factor that separates Mara Salvatrucha from traditional American street gangs is the active link maintained between MS members in the United States and those in El Salvador. The ties between the gangs in the two nations are active, strong and appear to be maintained for several mutually beneficial reasons, as each side provides the other with an asset or a �commodity� not readily available in their respective country.

In El Salvador, the availability of military-grade munitions at bargain-basement prices provides the MS in the United States with cheap and relatively easy access to heavy firepower. Spending U.S. currency in El Salvador, a hand grenade sells for $1 to $2, and an M-16 rifle for $200 to $220. On the United States end of the pipeline, there are a number of high-demand items, but topping the wish-list for the Salvadoran MS are handguns, automobiles and personal computers, none of which are easily found in El Salvador. In fact, demand for handguns is so high that they are often accepted as payment for drug transactions, then either sent back to El Salvador as bartered-wealth or for actual use. The situation is much the same with automobiles, which are stolen in the United States and exported to South America where they are often traded for drugs in deals with cartels. These transactions are so prolific and so vital that an estimated 80 percent of the cars driven in El Salvador were reported as stolen in the United States.

The ramifications of this pipeline of drugs, guns and contraband are far reaching. For the Salvatruchas still in El Salvador, it means access to U.S. dollars, stolen cars, small arms and high-value technical items. For those in the United States, it offers access to an unlimited arsenal at subsidized prices, allowing U.S. Salvatruchas to outgun and overpower nearly any potential adversary, including law-enforcement personnel not fully aware of the arsenal available to or the ferocity of their opposition.

Illegal immigrants in the United States are responsible for most of the violent crime in large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Houston and Austin. However, immigrant advocacy groups have barred police departments and other government agencies from reporting violations of immigration law to federal authorities in those areas, according to Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald in her article, The Illegal Alien Crime Wave, published in the winter 2004 City Journal.

Police report that they routinely see previously deported illegals from gangs such as MS13 back on the streets in the United States. However, unless officers witness such individuals felons by their very presence in the United States committing another illegal act in plain view, they are not allowed to make an arrest.

In New York, a gang of five Latinos four of them illegal abducted and raped a 42- year-old mother of two in Queens. Three of the illegals had been arrested on previous occasions for assault, armed robbery and drug offenses. However, the New York Police Department did not notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service because of sanctuary policies instituted by Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Operations and characteristics: As previously discussed, MS13 supplies its arsenal and narcotics stock from El Salvador, but its criminal activities within the United States far exceed the bounds of smuggling and gunrunning. As a criminal element, Mara Salvatrucha is a force to be reckoned with, existing as both a nation-spanning gang and as a strictly local street-thug posse. In fact, there seems to be no national command structure within the United States that would imply cohesiveness as the cliques spread nationwide. That said, national trends do become readily apparent and may well even be coordinated, but again, this does not support a command-and-control hierarchy in any sense.

In Del Ray, a section of Alexandria, Virginia, MS13 is believed to have been involved in the still unsolved murder of Nancy Dunning, 56, wife of the Fairfax County Sheriff, James Dunning, in the family home. Sheriff Dunning has a high profile position as the official responsible for the County Detention Facility that houses both local and federal offenders awaiting trial or deportation. The death of Dunning is attributed by Alexandria police as probably related to an incident in her business career in real estate.

In the Washington metropolitan area, MS13 activity dominates the region. Of some estimated 5,000 gang members in Washington D.C. [particularly Adams Morgan], Maryland [particularly Montgomery County], and Virginia [Fairfax County], the top three gangs Mara Salvatrucha 13, Vatos Locos and Street Thug Criminals (STC), respectively have memberships of some 4,500 (MS), 150 (Vatos Locos) and 100 (STC). It is noted that there are street gangs operated by other ethnic groups such as Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian and Chinese youth gangs supplementing the home-grown criminal gangs. Congress has allocated a mere $2 million for purposes of law-enforcement information gathering on gangs generally.

Recruitment of new members starts as early as elementary school. Targets for potentially new Salvatruchas are usually Hispanic children somehow isolated from the group, either with family problems, social difficulties or a newcomer to the area. Typically, MS plays the role gangs have often taken in the lives of their members and answers some unfulfilled need for attention, acceptance or love. Oftentimes a recruit will be built up, told how great he is and what an asset he would be, in a classic good cop approach. Everything changes in the moment of initiation. Members and ex-members alike have described variations of a crude initiation rite that consists of beating up the new recruit, sometimes for 13 seconds, after which he is accepted as a new member of the gang.

Women are not allowed as members of MS13 either in the United States or elsewhere. They are frequently attached, however, in an arrangement of relationships that seem to range from servitude to accessory. Women provide services for gang members, from carrying weapons to acting as decoys, to providing sex and writing computer programs. Women are also the targets and ultimately the victims of MS13. A common revenue source for MS is a tax on prostitutes operating in MS territory, usually about $50 a week, a sum that does not alienate the women and affords them protection. However, they are encouraged to pay through intimidation and violence. Protection rackets are much the same, and variations of both are common.

In every country in which they operate, MS has had problems of women becoming jealous of one another or one becoming an informant for the police. When discovered, the informant is brutally tortured, killed and dismembered. In Guatamala, MS has developed the tactic of sending letters to the police, accompanied by the head of a 13-or 14 year old girl.

The MS members identify themselves with a number of different tags or

tattoos. A number 13 or variation of the two digits 1 and 3, the word suerno [southerner] or sur, an abbreviation of the same word. These terms reference the fact that MS members like to claim their home as Southern California, as Northern California is the territory of

rival gangs. Other common tags are M or MS. Many of these will often be worn at once, but it is important to note that there is no single signature that always

uniquely identifies an MS13 member. The 13 and sur tattoos are relatively common among Hispanic gangs, including prison gangs both inside and outside of California. A more reliable indicator would be a combination of known symbols and tags. (NOTE - The photographs that appear in this article were not part of the original work.)

As a general rule, Mara Salvatrucha exhibits no fear of law enforcement whatsoever and in the past has not hesitated to kill an officer. MS13 gang members are responsible for the execution of three federal agents and numerous shootings of law-enforcement officers across the country.

The MS members have been known to booby-trap their drug-stash houses with antipersonnel grenades under the assumption that they will be searched by law enforcement. Based on their continued relationship with the FMLN, it is reasonable to assume that there continue to be new members with paramilitary experience who are themselves skilled in demolitions and small arms, and perhaps most importantly in the training and instruction of these weapons to others. It therefore follows that anyone conducting dealings with Mara Salvatrucha 13 should use the utmost caution and assumes the presence of very dangerous situation.

Just as the migration of Salvadoran immigrants does not produce an entire �New San Salvador� overnight, the proliferation of the Salvatruchas, which appears to have accompanied the movement of Salvadorans needs to be remembered in the early stages of dealing with newly reported or emergent cliques. Not every Salvadoran immigrant who calls himself a Salvatrucha is necessarily a member of the MS13. Hence, La Mara, Mara 18, or simply Salvatrucha need not refer specifically to MS13, and in fact both La Mara and Mara 18 are each themselves different gangs entirely. To an observer or officer who is acquainted with the threat presented by Mara 13, hearing �Salvatrucha� from a suspected gang member is a chilling experience.

Conclusions The Mara Salvatruchas 13 are now the problem of the United States. They fight and kill in broad daylight in America�s cities and towns even as they live and die in the seemingly grayest areas of U.S. law. Very often they are illegal immigrants, but even those who are not, because of their age and ethnicity are unlikely to attract much scrutiny until an incident of such magnitude or tragedy takes place to focus public attention on the problem.

Traditionally, the methods available to the United States for use against MS13 are arrest, incarceration and deportation. In the case of deportation back to El Salvador, this can be an effective threat and weapon against the Salvatruchas, as upon the arrival of convicted gangsters in El Salvador, they find themselves the targets of the Sombra Negra [Black Shadow] a rumored vigilante group said to have been operating for some years. The story of the Sombra Negra is a chilling one for potential deportees because the rumors of vigilante justice band are frighteningly � suspiciously � like the stories of the death squads of the 1980s.

It is worth noting that following the end of the 12-year Salvadoran civil war, the insurgent FMLN ' a Cuban-orchestrated cohesion of five Communist groups, which was in turn supplied with arms from Cuba, China and the Soviet Union ' disarmed and became a political party. While the opposition Alianza Republicana Nacional (ARENA) [National Republican Alliance] party has held the presidency since 1989, there are elections scheduled for March 21. FMLN leader Shafik Handal will stand as a candidate. The 72 yearold is the former head of the Salvadoran Communist Party. He has spoken openly about turning El Salvador into a Socialist state, and recently sent Fidel Castro a letter in support of the jailing of 75 peaceful oppositionists in Cuba. His party is an essential part of the MS13 network that continues to send rifles and assorted munitions to the Salvatruchas of Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States.

The gangs are the perfect instrument for the same organized crime rackets that have traditionally operated throughout the Americas. With young, enthusiastic memberships who maintain virtual blood loyalties to the point of brutally punishing any attempts to leave the group, a ready-made force of gunmen, smugglers, thieves, dealers and above all expendables, is made available to the cartels, mafias, and similar organized-crime syndicates of the modern world. Their young soldiers are of the best kind as they are fighting for their own territory, their own turf and for themselves. The overwhelming majority of them will never even know of any employment by outsiders, and in fact the majority of members will never technically be employed.

In May 2003, some 19 years after MS13 emerged, top law-enforcement officials from across the country met to conduct the first session of a new policing organization designed to share information, intelligence and tactics in combating gang violence.

One solution is the Clear Law Enforcement for Alien Removal Act, or CLEAR. The legislation, which has 112 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, would require that state and local governments provide the Department of Homeland Security with information about illegal aliens that police arrest or interrogate in the course of their duties and would end the current federal policy of catching and releasing immigration violators on grounds that there is no place to hold them. One of the outspoken critics of the legislation is Maryland�s Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan, who has a reliance on the Hispanic and liberal vote in his county.

Their force of numbers and disproportionate weight of influence through the application of the force of fear imposed by the use of weapons cripples the development of half a dozen countries in Central America, threatens an entire generation of Hispanic youth and could engulf the United States.

The United States has not yet dealt with large numbers of heavily armed streetwise thugs who would prefer to confront authorities with high-powered rifles instead of highpowered lawyers, and who value their own lives so little that they would expend them almost casually for the sake of depriving their enemy, the police of their lives.

Both in Central America and the United States, the question is being asked by the lawenforcement community, �How does a police force seeking to act within the law and respect human rights successfully combat an enemy, consisting of pre-teen to teenage children armed with heavy weapons, all of whom will kill a police officer, without thought,, and who if arrested can only be held in custody for a few hours?�

Finally, it should be considered that if relatively small countries, such as in Central America, having suffered only two decades of civil war, can produce such sociopaths among their youths, there is an even more serious threat to our society. Young people with no moral education, adhering to no social contract as is commonly understood but trained to kill from African, Balkan, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and other areas have come to maturity. Many are the second or even third generations who have grown up knowing only war-like skills.

In short, these are youths who do not have an issue with stealing, killing, beating, and dismembering. They are trained survivors, and care only for efficiency and expediency. If they need something, they take it. If they are disturbed or threatened, they kill. This is all they know and this is in what they excel. Civil societies are incredibly soft, slow moving targets for them, so alien to their experience as to have no bearing on their reality. A 12- year Salvadoran boy may have killed more people than most North Americans have disposed of garden pests. In the next 10 years, over 50 percent of the developing world will be under the age of 15, with no hope of work, and plenty of training in killing. Will the human rights and immigration policies of the United States remain as they are in 2004?

State of the Union Address: Rep. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC) talks about the community plan for keeping young men out of gangs, which will be led by First Lady Laura Bush. http://www.apfn.org/audio/gangs.mp3
Thursday, February 3, 2005

Wed Feb 9,12:29 PM ET

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A project to spend $150 million over the next three years to combat youth gangs was a rare new initiative in President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget this week but some experts are skeptical it can have much impact.

In last week's State of the Union address, Bush put his wife Laura in charge of the effort he said would "help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence."

The money would go to community and religious groups that mentor children, provide youth activities and work with former prisoners and drug addicts. At the same time, Bush's proposed 2006 budget, submitted to the U.S. Congress on Monday, slashed spending for several existing anti-poverty programs among more than 150 that would be eliminated or sharply curtailed.

"I'm very skeptical about this latest initiative. At best, it's a partial Band-Aid," said Greg Scott, a sociologist at Chicago's DePaul University who has studied gangs.

Scott said such initiatives have dated back to the 1960s with a record that is "spotty at best."

Michael Kharfen of "Fight Crime, Invest in Kids," a national anti-crime organization, said he also was dubious.

"It looks on the surface that the administration is taking money from existing programs already working on gangs and kids in trouble to fund this new initiative and that won't help communities," he said.

Kharfen said Bush's budget included a $56 million cut for the Juvenile Justice Accountability block grant that funded several such programs.

First lady Laura Bush has already begun traveling around the country to tout the initiative. On Tuesday, she was at George Washington Elementary School in Baltimore.

"Children who are overly aggressive in the first grade are more at risk later in life. Boys especially are a greater risk than girls for violence, learning disabilities and juvenile arrest," she said.

The Department of Justice (news - web sites) estimates gang membership nationwide at around 750,000. Although crime rates have been falling for more than 10 years, gang violence is increasing as a proportion of overall violent crime.

Some gang experts applauded the White House initiative as a promising start.

But Steve Nawojczyk, a gang researcher and educator from North Little Rock, Arkansas, said, "We need much more. We need after school programs, community policing, more parental involvement, more in-school programs, more one-on-one mentoring and more neighborhood involvement."

Jared Lewis of "Know Gangs," a group that organizes education sessions about gangs for law enforcement officials and social service workers, said too much focus in the past has been on identifying gang members and sending them to prison. Ninety percent then return to their communities and many resume their activities. Some 650,000 will be released from prison this year.

"We've seen a tremendous amount of money invested in locking up gang members but very little for rehabilitation and follow up care," Lewis said. "Any sort of resources from the government is a benefit but we see to see much more money going into that."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050209/pl_nm/bush_gangs_dc_2

No street cred
EVIDENTLY every State of the Union speech must have a jarring, incongruous moment that comes out of nowhere. Last year's was President Bush calling for steroids testing in Major League Baseball - not a bad idea but totally out of, well, left field.

This year's came when the President announced that his wife, Laura Bush, would lead a national effort to reduce gang activity in urban America.

The First Lady smiled sweetly, acknowledged the applause of official Washington, and accepted the first great charge of her husband's administration - stewardship of a $150 million, three-year program to assist at-risk youth between 8 and 17.

If some thought that Hillary Clinton's assignment to tackle health-care reform during President Clinton's first term was a stretch, the prospect of Laura Bush, the soft-spoken librarian from Crawford, Texas, lecturing Crips and Bloods about the evils of gangs is a Saturday Night Live skit waiting to happen.

Without a doubt, the First Lady radiates empathy and concern for the disadvantaged. Among all of her husband's advisers, she is the one whom we most easily can imagine relating to society's outcasts in a non-condescending way.

But as nice a woman as she must be, Mrs. Bush isn't our first choice for heading up a federal anti-gang initiative. The government's gang czar should be someone with street credibility and a whole lot of law enforcement experience. For all of her good qualities, Mrs. Bush has neither.

Street gangs and the pathologies that create them are a complex phenomenon in urban and suburban America. Anyone who takes them on needs to be more than a good role model.

Niceness is no substitute for a familiarity with the conditions that drive young people into violent gangs. An initiative without a clear vision of how to deal with the problem is doomed to operate on only a symbolic level. The President obviously loves his wife, but he didn't do her any favors by putting her in charge of such an important effort. What's next - naming Barbara and Jenna Bush to run the Department of Education?

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050215/OPINION02/502150355/-1/OPINION

A burgeoning East Boston-based street gang made up of alleged rapists and machete-wielding robbers has been linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting Boston police to ``turn up the heat'' on its members, the Herald has learned.

MS-13, which stands for La Mara Salvatrucha, is an extremely violent organization with roots in El Salvador, and boasts more than 100 ``hardcore members'' in East Boston who are suspected of brutal machete attacks, rapes and home invasions. There are hundreds more MS-13 gangsters in towns along the North Shore, said Boston police Sgt. Detective Joseph Fiandaca, who has investigated the gang since it began tagging buildings in Maverick Square in 1995.

In recent months, intelligence officials in Washington have warned national law enforcement agencies that al-Qaeda terrorists have been spotted with members of MS-13 in El Salvador, prompting concerns the gang may be smuggling Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into the country. Law enforcement officials have long believed that MS-13 controls alien smuggling routes along Mexico. The warning is being taken seriously in East Boston, where Raed Hijazi, an al-Qaeda operative charged with training the suicide bombers in the attack on the USS Cole, lived and worked, prosecutors have charged.

Also, the commercial jets that hurtled into the World Trade Center towers in New York City were hijacked from Logan International Airport.

``The terrorist aspect, especially when you think in terms of 9/11 and how intent these terrorists are, will turn the heat up on our efforts with MS-13,'' Fiandaca said. MS-13 members congregate near the Maverick Square train station sporting white and blue bandannas, their skin inked with spider webs and ``laugh now, cry later'' clown faces.

``MS-13 is the most dangerous gang in the area,'' Fiandaca said. ``They are big. They are mobile. Now they have a terrorist connection.''

The theory that Salvadoran criminals manage to smuggle people over the border was bolstered this month when two Boston men described as MS-13 leaders were spotted on the North Shore days before Christmas - a year after they were deported by Boston Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators for gang-related crimes.

One of the two men, Elmer ``Tiger'' Tejada, 24, who had been deported after being convicted of a slew of crimes, including attempted murder charges for hurling a machete at Chelsea cops, was busted in Lynn on New Year's Day. Tejada is described as ``an original MS-13 member'' from East Boston, sources said.

A manhunt has been launched for the second fugitive, who is in the country illegally, Boston police said.

The growing number of MS-13 members, and the degree of violence the gang engages in, prompted investigators from 14 local and national agencies to form the North Shore Gang Intelligence task force in 2000, Fiandaca said.

Among the most notorious local crimes attributed to MS-13 was the gang rape of two deaf girls, one 14, the other 17, in a Somerville park in 2002. Three MS-13 gang members were charged in the brutal rapes, during which one victim was knocked from her wheelchair before the assault.

MARA SALVATRUCHA–MS 13

President George Bush glossed over the issue of immigration during his State of the Nation speech Wednesday night, barely touching on the subject. Yet weeks prior to giving the speech, he had, on occasion, floated trial balloons suggesting we pass legislation granting legal status to millions of illegal aliens here who have blatantly broken our laws in sneaking into this country, most of whom are from Mexico. “It’s a compassionate way to treat people who come to our country,” he said during a news conference in January, “It recognizes the reality of the world in which we live There are some people...there are some jobs in America that Americans won’t do and others are willing to do.”

It seems he is not giving much thought to the impact on our schools, hospitals, the job market, law enforcement and prisons, these aliens are creating. He will though, because organized opposition from the House Republicans is gaining momentum. With the new Congress commencing, key Republicans indicate they will push legislation to tighten the Mexican border near San Diego and to introduce legislation prohibiting states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

When we first invaded Iraq, in a news conference he said of other countries, “You are either for us or against us.” Oil rich Mexico refused to help us, so by his reasoning, that country was against us. Yet now, he continues to pander to Vicente Fox. Why?

What drives President Bush? Is he poll-driven like Bill Clinton? Possibly, but now in his second term he is unable to run for President again, and it seems he will spend much of his current term dealing with Iraq. And across the border, Iran looming on the horizon, may become an even bigger headache. Iran, a cauldron of terrorism and hate, will surely succeed in developing nuclear weapons while he is still in office.

President Bush should reflect back to March, 2001, when he granted “temporary protected status” to as many as 300,000 illegal immigrants from El Salvador, many of whom were hardened veterans of that country’s civil war, a war that raged for 12 years, and ended in1992. That bloody war pitted government troops against leftists guerillas, and incurred in excess of 100,000 casualties, along with sending hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing northward. A large percentage of these refugees that had fought in their homeland, and who had been trained by U.S. Army advisers in El Salvador on the finer aspects of explosives, weaponry, infiltration and warfare, made it into the U.S. And in so doing, became the nucleus of a new formidable street gang, now pervasive throughout the United States.

With the arrival of the first wave of these people in Los Angeles, the area of Rampart Division became the first stop. At that time, Rampart was the home base of the violent Eighteenth Street gang. The newcomers who had been part of the bloody civil war in their homeland, were quick to seize upon the opportunities afforded them in their new home. After all, doesn’t everyone come here to make a better life? We keep hearing that from the politicians.

Many of the Salvadorans jumped in with the Eighteenth Street gang, but the majority of them decided to form their own street gang limiting membership to Salvadorans only. Thus, Mara Salvatrucha was born. The name “Mara Salvatrucha–13,” breaks down into: “Mara” which is equivalent to “barrio, or neighborhood as used by U.S. Hispanic gangs, “Salva” refers to El Salvador, and “trucha” translates into “beware of.” The “13,” only denotes their preference in claiming southern Hispanic, as opposed to 14, which denotes northern Hispanic allegiance.

“Beware of the Salvadorans.” Many people, including the police were soon to realize this.
The MS-13 took to street crime like a duck to water. Drugs, weapons, robbery and burglary, witness intimidation, extortion, car jackings, became commonplace with them, as did rape, arson, murder-for-hire, and bloody gang fighting for control of turf.

The MS-13 soon took on their own identity, and earned a reputation from the other street gangs as being a particularly unmerciful gang which would retaliate violently when challenged. After establishing themselves in L.A., they set up beach heads in other large cities, the first being Washington D.C., followed by New York City. Today, many of our major cities has an MS-13 chapter.

In L.A., the MS-13 was cutting into the profits of long established Hispanic gangs. Gang meetings were held to decide how best to deal with the Salvadorans. A showdown was inevitable, and it happened on a balmy afternoon in a park frequented by MS-13 members and family who were having a picnic and drinking beer. Many of the other picnickers were Mexican American gang members. The Salvadorans decided to deride the other gang members by burning a Mexican flag they picked up.

The Maravilla, a pervasive L.A. based street gang that dates back to the 1920s, and which has about a dozen chapters were among those in attendance. Fights broke out, and Maravilla declared war on MS-13, as did the burgeoning Eighteenth Street gang. The long established Mexican Mafia got into the fray and subsequently demanded a 10% tax from MS-13 on all profits they gained from street crime. The Salvadorans told La eMe to go to hell. For the next year, the MS-13 fought a defensive battle against the others, but did not back down.

Their resolve so impressed La eMe, that a truce was called. Secret meetings were held between the two gangs. It was agreed that the Salvadorans would sell drugs and weapons for La eMe, and provide muscle and tax collectors. But the Maravilla, who would not call off the war, and who resented La eMe’s pact with MS-13, also refused to pay taxes. This became contentious with La eMe, who put out the green light on Maravilla. Today, in Los Angeles where Maravilla is entrenched, graffiti is splashed around proclaiming Maravilla is “TAX FREE.”

The MS-13 and Maravilla continued to wage war. Fighting between the two groups broke out in other cities where they had a presence, including Reno. In Reno, on August 13, 1995, Juan Mauricio Castillo, A.K.A. “Little Boy,” age 15, who was identified as an MS-13 gang member, fired a .380 pistol in the direction of rival Maravilla gang members who had gathered at Horseman’s Park to play soccer. Tragically, his aim was poor and the rounds went past them and struck a 12 year old girl in the head killing her.

At trial, Little Boy who had turned 16, was hammered with two life terms running wild. As of this writing he is confined at Ely state prison, resting well we hope.

THE AL-QAEDA CONNECTION

Across the nation, in Boston, the MS-13 are reported to have over 100 hard-core members who are active in violent street crime and home invasions. On these sorties it is reported they carry razor sharp machetes along with firearms. In 2002, in a Somerville park, three of the Salvadoran gang members were charged with the bloody rape of two local deaf girls, ages 14, and 17. One of the girls was kicked out of her wheel chair prior to the assault.

More ominous, are reports that link MS-13 with al-Qaeda terrorist organizations. Intelligence sources in Washington have alerted Boston area authorities that al-Qaeda terrorists under surveillance in El Salvador have been seen meeting with local Mara Salvatrucha leadership in that country. This gives rise to the suspicion that the Salvadorans may be smuggling Islamic fundamentalist terrorists into the U.S. They have the established alien smuggling routes through Mexico, and the ability to do so.

Boston police have reported that two MS-13 leaders whom they deported back to El Salvador a year ago, have again surfaced in Boston, where they were spotted recently on the North Shore. One of the men, Elmer “Tiger” Tejada, was initially deported after a crime spree which included charges of attempted murder of a police officer when he hurled a machete at Chelsea police.

The Boston police continue to track this al-Qaeda connection. Raed Hijazi, an American born in the Bay area, and a one time student at Sacramento City College, is alleged to have ties with al-Qaeda. Hijazi at one time drove a cab in Boston and is alleged to have sent money he earned to a terrorist cell in the Middle East. After he left the U.S. he was charged with training the suicide bombers that attacked the USS Cole.

He was next heard of in October, 2000, when Syrian authorities arrested him in Damascus and turned him over to the Jordanians. Jordan had charged him with conspiracy to commit mass murder by placing bombs in the Radisson Hotel in downtown Amman that was expected to be full of American tourists during the Millennium celebrations in 1999. In addition, he was charged with conspiracy to murder U.S. and Israeli citizens at two Christian Holy sites, and two border crossings into Israel. At trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. As of yet, this sentence has not been carried out.

The FBI has not revealed any connection between MS-13 and the al-Qaeda to the public. However many other reports do. In December of last year, an MS-13 gang member and a Muslim from Bangladesh were arrested crossing the Rio Grande together. This prompted Congressman Solomon Ortiz, (D-TX) co-chairman of the House border caucus, to state publicly that meetings between the two groups have taken place, and that the Mara Salvatrucha have a network for illegal entry into this country that stretches all the way from El Salvador to the U.S. border, and that they may already be smuggling terrorists into our country.

The Boston authorities who are tracking this connection, want to remind us all that the jets that were hijacked and became suicide bombers resulting in a loss of life of 3,000 innocent persons, were boarded by the terrorists at Logan International Airport, Boston.

Today, MS-13 are recruiting nationwide, and are not now limiting their membership to Salvadorans only. Other Hispanics are welcome if they can measure up to the ruthlessness of the Salvadorans. Identification of the Mara Salvatrucha gang members can be made by their tattoos. Though most of them carry generic gang tattoos, i.e., happy/sad faces; spider webs and the like, the tattoo that connects them to the gang is the “M S 13.” When confronted, the gang member may try to say these initials stand for a girl friend, “Maria Sanchez,” for instance, but only uninformed law enforcement personnel would accept this.

BV

This Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles flier shows Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a Saudi national who may be plotting terrorist attacks as part of al-Qaida.

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States — including a stronghold in the Washington area — in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said. Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans — mostly gang members — into the United States. Although they are actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, Mara Salvatrucha members in America also have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults — including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria that severely mutilated his hands. The Salvadoran gang, known to law enforcement authorities as MS-13 because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13, is thought to have established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, from where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States. Authorities said al Qaeda terrorists hope to take advantage of a lack of detention space within the Department of Homeland Security that has forced immigration officials to release non-Mexican illegal aliens back into the United States, rather than return them to their home countries. Less than 15 percent of those released appear for immigration hearings. Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens designated as other-than-Mexican, or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border. El Shukrijumah, born in Saudi Arabia but thought to be a Yemen national, was spotted in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July, having crossed the border illegally from Nicaragua after a stay in Panama. U.S. authorities said al Qaeda operatives have been in Tegucigalpa planning attacks against British, Spanish and U.S. embassies. Known to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada, El Shukrijumah had sought meetings with the Mara Salvatrucha gang leaders who control alien-smuggling routes through Mexico and into the United States. El Shukrijumah, 29, who authorities said was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb" and reportedly has family members in Guyana, was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia, where U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said he is sought in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States. A former southern Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks, El Shukrijumah was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in plans to strike new targets in the United States. Citing "credible intelligence from multiple sources," Mr. Ashcroft said at the time that El Shukrijumah posed "a clear and present danger to America." In August, an FBI alert described him as "armed and dangerous" and a major threat to homeland security. Earlier this month, Mr. Ashcroft confirmed that U.S. border agents and inspectors had ramped up efforts to find El Shukrijumah amid reports that the al Qaeda leader was thought to be seeking entry routes into the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr. Ashcroft noted that increased enforcement efforts were under way in the wake of a rise of arrests of border jumpers from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Authorities said Mara Salvatrucha gang members moved into the Los Angeles area in the 1980s and developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent. The gang since has expanded into the Washington area, including Virginia and Maryland, and into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Georgia and Florida. More than 3,000 Mara Salvatrucha gang members are thought to be in the Washington area, with a major operation in Northern Virginia. Other gang centers, authorities said, include Montgomery and Prince George's counties and the Hispanic neighborhoods of Washington. Mr. McNulty, whose office has prosecuted Mara Salvatrucha gang members, has described the organization as the "gang of greatest interest" to law enforcement authorities. He said gang members are recruited predominantly from Hispanic communities and typically among juveniles, some as young as 13. Recruits are "jumped" into the gang by being beaten by members while others count to 13, he said. Gang rules, he said, are indoctrinated into new recruits and ruthlessly enforced. Those who cooperate with law enforcement are given the "green light," he said, meaning that the gang had approved their killing. In March, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office filed an injunction against Mara Salvatrucha, charging that the gang's criminal activity constituted a "public nuisance" based on the number of killings, robberies and drug crimes. The injunction requires gang members, under public nuisance statutes, to follow curfew rules and regulations and prohibits them from associating, driving or appearing together in designated areas of the city.

Local Gang With Ties to Al Qaeda?
Local Gang With Ties to Al Qaeda?

Mara Salvatrucha 13 has purported ties Al Qaeda

The thirteen is part of its fear factor. Investigators saying gang members try to commit much of their signature violence on the 13th of the month. They usually mark their territory with blue spray paint. But local officers and federal agents say the gang goes far beyond graffiti.

They are bold, brash, and very dangerous. Beatings are used as rituals to see if the kid getting pummeled is tough enough to be a member of Mara Salvatrucha. They traffic drugs, guns, illegal aliens and they protect their industry with the power of violence. The crime scenes they leave behind are said to be worst than most.
A Bristol County House of Corrections inmate was a soldier in the gangs. The weapon of choice in several cases is the machete. At one crime scene, a victim was missing three fingers.

In rapes, robberies, they killed three federal agents.
One local concern is recruitment within the prison. He would only shake his head about whether that's going on here where he was put for stabbing someone bad enough to leave them in a wheelchair.

With evidence MS 13 is growing and with four known members in his jail the sheriff says his officers focus on pulling the gangs roots before they grow.
The inmate tells officials he wants out of the gang that he believes they set him up and then deserted him. But he implies getting out alive may be next to impossible.
The sheriff says the gang's violent nature and ability to smuggle guns is attracting an alliance with al Qaeda. A Texas congressman criticized the feds for not doing enough. A FBI spokesman says a clear link between the gang and the terrorists is not established.

==============================================

Hub ‘should be worried’: U.S. rep: MS-13 gang is true terror threat
By Michele McPhee
Friday, January 7, 2005

A Texas congressman said MS-13 gang members and Middle Eastern aliens are using the border in his district to sneak into the country - and Boston should be worried.
U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Texas), co-chairman of the House Border Caucus, told the Herald he is ``very concerned'' about al-Qaeda's link to Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a gang he described as ``extremely vicious.''
The Herald reported this week that a chapter of MS-13 has taken control of a swath of East Boston, prompting Boston police to create a task force to take down the violent, drug-dealing thugs.
Last month, a Muslim man from Bangledesh, Fakhrul Islam, was arrested alongside a reputed MS-13 gang member and 11 others after the group waded across the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas.
The alleged MS-13 member, Francky Sanchez-Solorzano, 21, was arrested and deported back to his native Honduras within days of the Dec. 4 bust, Ortiz said. Islam's status in the country remained unclear.
Attorney General John Ashcroft has publicly said a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, has offered top dollar to infiltrate the United States via the Mexican border.
``Boston should be worried,'' said Ortiz's spokeswoman, Cathy Travis. ``These terrorists and gang members are getting on a bus here in Texas and heading to the East Coast.''
FBI officials steadfastly deny any connection between MS-13 - a brutal, international criminal organization that has thousands of members across the country - and the terrorist al-Qaeda network.
``The FBI has not established a link between MS-13 and al-Qaeda,'' said Joe Parris, supervisory special agent in the FBI national press office. ``There is no link established.''
But Ortiz said the Bush administration is ``in denial'' and should tell the American people the truth.
``It's established that Mara Salvatrucha and al-Qaeda have had meetings. Middle Eastern people are willing to pay millions to get into this country,'' Ortiz said yesterday.
Two MS-13 members have been arrested by local cops this week - including a criminal who had been deported by the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, but snuck back into the country.
Elmer ``Tiger'' Tejada, 24, was arrested New Year's Day in Lynn - a year after he was deported as a criminal. Another gang member who had been deported remains at large.
Yesterday, a member of the East Boston Loco Salvadorans, a sect of MS-13 that congregates in Maverick Square, was arraigned on fugitive from justice charges stemming from the 2002 killing of a Washington, D.C., man.
Melquis Alvarez-Garcia, 21, wearing the gang's trademark blue and white colors in the form of a Yankees pinstripe baseball jersey, is accused of stabbing his alleged victim through the heart on April 6, 2002, prosecutors said. http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=62313

==================================================
Unholy Border Alliance
By Erick Stakelbeck
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2005

The new intelligence reform bill signed into law by President Bush on December 17 may ultimately end up being remembered more for the provisions it didn't contain rather than those it did.

After much heated debate, House and Senate negotiators ultimately threw out proposed provisions to the bill that would have tightened immigration laws. Although House Speaker Dennis Hastert has promised to bring drivers' license standards, asylum procedures and other border security provisions back to the House floor by early 2005, in the meantime, the very real danger that Islamist terrorists will infiltrate America's porous southern border persists.

Roughly 60,000 illegal immigrants designated as 'other-than-Mexican,' or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border, including a sizable number from Arab and Muslim countries. And if recent reports are any indication, they may be getting some troubling new help in their efforts to enter the United States.

In a December 4 incident that received scant media attention, a Bangladeshi Muslim man named Fakhrul Islam was among a group of 13 illegal aliens arrested near Brownsville, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. Border Patrol agents have said that one of the men detained along with Islam was a member of Mara Salvatrucha, a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with more than 300,000 members across Central and North America, including powerful enterprises in several major U.S. cities.

Mara Salvatrucha, also commonly known as 'MS-13' due to its members' proclivity for sporting tattoos of the number 13, is involved in a smorgasbord of illegal activity, including the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people across the Mexican border. The gang controls many of the smuggling routes from Mexico into the U.S., a fact that has not escaped Al-Qaeda operatives eager to carry out attacks on American soil.

In July, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, a high-ranking Al-Qaeda leader and one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, was spotted in Honduras meeting with members of MS-13. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that El-Shukrijumah, who he has described as a 'clear and present danger to America,' is seeking ways to infiltrate the U.S. via the Mexican border, and is willing to pay top dollar in order to do so.

El-Shukrijumah, reportedly last seen in August in northern Mexico knows that the potential killing of innocent American civilians would certainly not deter MS-13 from working with Al-Qaeda: the gang is thought to be responsible for thousands of murders and maimings throughout the Western Hemisphere; and, like Islamist terrorists, decapitations and home-made bombs are part of its grisly arsenal.

With a ruthless, money-driven cabal like MS-13 controlling much of the illegal traffic between the U.S. and Mexico, there's no telling how many Islamist terrorists have already taken advantage. That someone of Middle Eastern descent could blend in with a large group of Mexicans with similarly dark complexions -- thereby escaping closer scrutiny from border patrols -- is all too feasible.

Then again, an October intelligence report supplied to the Department of Homeland Security by Russian security services said that a group of 25 backpack-carrying Chechen terrorists -- all white -- illegally entered Arizona by way of Mexico last summer. Furthermore, in September, Farida Ahmed, a South African Muslim woman, pleaded guilty in a Texas court to illegal entry, lying to a federal agent and using an altered passport. Ahmed had been detained by Border Patrol officers in July as she tried to board a plane for New York out of Texas.

At the time of her arrest, Ahmed was carrying $7,300 in various currencies as well as a fake South African passport that was missing pages. She admitted to entering the U.S. illegally by wading across the Rio Grande, and her travel itinerary showed that on her way to America, she had stopped in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, just as several of the 9/11 hijackers had done.

It was announced last week that Ahmed is due to be deported. But many non-Mexican illegal aliens like Ahmed are invariably released by immigration officials who simply don't have the detention space to hold them. Worse, up to 85 percent of them skip their scheduled immigration hearings, only to disappear into American society.

While entry into the U.S. is their primary goal in establishing a base in Latin America, Islamist terrorists -- well-aware of the allure Marxism once held for many south of the border -- also see the region as a potential breeding ground for Islamic converts due to its poor economic and social conditions and corrupt governments.

For instance, the Shia terrorist group Hezbollah wields a strong presence in the tri-border region, a lawless, crime-ridden area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect. Both Osama bin Laden and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are also said to have spent time there, during the 1990's.

It was Mohammed who in 2002 encouraged alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla to 'enter the United States by way of Mexico' in order to carry out attacks on U.S. targets, according to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Ironically, before converting to Islam and volunteering his services to Al-Qaeda, Padilla belonged to the Chicago chapter of the Latin Kings -- like MS-13, a violent Hispanic criminal gang.

Although U.S. agents were able to collar Padilla before he could carry out a terrorist attack, the U.S. border strategy, as presently construed, may one day soon yield a much less savory result. Come January, lawmakers should take notice.

Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counter-terrorism research institute. http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16509

Tuesday, January 4, 2005
COMMENTARY: Homeland insecurity: The year in review

2004 was a good year for terrorists, violent gang members, law-breakers and fraud artists seeking safe haven in America. Let's reminisce:

The rise of MS-13. The savage El Salvador-based gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), has now penetrated more than a dozen states. In May, a Fairfax, Va., teenager had his fingers chopped off in an MS-13 machete attack. In November, Washington, D.C.-area police received warning that MS-13 is plotting to ambush and kill them when they respond to service calls. Active in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, MS-13 members in America have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, carjackings, extortions and rapes. The gang has also been linked to efforts to help al Qaeda infiltrate the U.S.-Mexico border.

The path of least resistance. Border Patrol officers and local investigative journalists in the

======================================

Mara Salvatrucha

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Bush's Open Borders

Prison Gangs - Sgt. Bill Valentine (Ret) Al-Qaeda and Prison Inmates

Prison Gangs - Sgt. Bill Valentine (Ret)
Al-Qaeda and Prison Inmates