The alleged chief of the MS-13 gang on the US east coast has been arrested in Virginia, Pam Bondi introduced on Thursday.
The US lawyer normal lauded the early morning arrest of the 24-year-old man from El Salvador, who was described as one in every of MS-13’s prime three leaders in the USA, as a significant victory within the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on a gang recognized for brutal violence and extortion.
The justice division didn’t instantly launch his identify or element the fees in opposition to him. Bondi stated he was residing within the US illegally, in northern Virginia, simply exterior of Washington DC. It was unclear whether or not he was dealing with federal prison expenses or had been taken into custody by immigration officers.
The administration promoted the arrest as a part of its effort to satisfy marketing campaign guarantees to quash unlawful immigration and get rid of gangs. MS-13 gang, or Mara Salvatrucha, was one in every of eight Latin American prison organizations declared international terrorist organizations by the Trump administration final month.
“We wish to make our streets safer,” Bondi instructed reporters. “We wish to make our faculties safer. We wish to make your neighborhoods safer. This man was residing in a neighborhood proper round you – now not.”
Up to now decade, the US justice division has intensified its deal with MS-13, which originated as a neighborhood avenue gang in Los Angeles, however grew right into a transnational gang primarily based in El Salvador. It has members in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico and hundreds of members throughout the US with quite a few branches or “cliques.”
The 2016 killings of two highschool women, who had been hacked and crushed to dying as they walked by way of their neighborhood on New York’s Lengthy Island, targeted nationwide consideration on the gang. Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, pals and classmates at Brentwood highschool, had been killed with a machete and a baseball bat by a gaggle of younger males and teenage boys who had stalked them from a automotive. Extra killings adopted within the months that adopted.
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