The Most Dangerous Gang in America - They're a violent force in 33 states and counting. Inside the battle to police Mara Salvatrucha
...Last May in Alexandria, gang members armed with machetes hacked away at a member of the South Side Locos, slicing off some of his fingers and leaving others dangling by a shred of skin. Only a week later in Herndon, a member of the 18th Street gang was pumped full of .38-caliber bullets, while his female companion, who tried to flee, was shot in the back. The assailant, according to a witness, had a large tattoo emblazoned on his forehead. It read MS, for Mara Salvatrucha, the gang allegedly responsible for all these attacks.
...But Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, wasn't terrifying just northern Virginia. "They were popping up everywhere," says Chris Swecker, assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division. "It seemed like we were hearing more and more about MS-13."... Mueller declared MS-13 the top priority of the bureau's criminal-enterprise branch—which targets organized crime—and authorized the creation of a new national task force to combat it. The task force, which includes agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), aims to take on MS-13 much as the FBI once tackled the Mafia.
Composed of mostly Salvadorans and other Central Americans—many of them
undocumented [criminal illegal aliens] —the gang has a uniquely international
profile, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 members in 33 states in the United
States (out of more than 700,000 gang members overall), and tens of thousands
more in Central America. It's considered the fastest-growing, most violent and
least understood of the nation's street gangs... No one is more interested in
busting up MS-13 than leaders of the Latino community, who live with the fear
and fallout of the gang's savage actions.
MS-13 got started in Los Angeles in the 1980s by Salvadorans fleeing a civil war....
Flush with new recruits from Central America, whether fleeing the law or accompanying parents seeking work along the immigrant trail, MS-13 members have set up cliques—geographically defined subgroups—in such remote redoubts as Boise, Idaho, and Omaha, Neb. ...
...According to a 2004 report by the National Drug Intelligence Center, the gang "may be increasing its coordination with MS-13 chapters in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia, and New York City, possibly signaling an attempt to build a national command structure."...
Read the complete article.