Grand Ol' Perspective: Mara Salvatrucha coming soon, to a theater near you

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

By Joseph Schloss

Illegal immigration is a hot-button issue for this presidential election cycle. Citizens line up to be “for” or “against” this divisive and complex topic. Having spent a career working in this arena, first as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and later as a Special Agent in the Anti-Smuggling Unit of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (now US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), I am frequently asked questions regarding this matter.  Usually, the conversation goes something like this: “Why is illegal entry into the United States such a big deal? Aren’t all those illegal aliens just trying to make a better life for themselves?”  The short answer is “look at Mara Salvatrucha.”

Mara Salvatrucha is a criminal enterprise that started out as a gang in Los Angeles, Calif., in the mid 1980s. It was traditionally comprised of illegal aliens who fled El Salvador during the civil war that raged there for more than 12 years. It was originally organized for self-defense against the hundreds of Hispanic street gangs that exist in the Los Angeles area.

It wasn’t long before this gang branched out into other areas of crime. In 1986, it was rumored that this gang had formed death squads to assassinate people in the United States who were in opposition to their side in the civil war in El Salvador. It was claimed that they were taking orders from government leaders within the El Salvadoran government. The US Immigration and Naturalization Service thoroughly investigated this matter and declared these fears unfounded. Both federal and local law enforcement agencies gave a collective sigh of relief. After all, they couldn’t have armed assassins roaming the streets of Los Angeles and killing at will.

What they neglected to consider was that they had a new and dangerous gang on their hands. They decided as each gang member was arrested for a crime, he was charged with a crime, incarcerated, and then deported. If law enforcement had made a concerted effort to squash this gang in its infancy we would not be faced with the Mara Salvatrucha behemoth.

Why should you care what goes on in California when you live far away in Wyoming?  Today, Mara Salvatrucha (also known as “MS-13”) is operating in California, Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Washington DC and El Salvador, Mexico, Canada, Colombia, Spain, England and Germany. It has an estimated membership of more than 100,000 worldwide. As they say in the movie business, it is “coming soon, to a theater near you”. 

Gang members are not intimidated by law enforcement and have committed burglaries, auto theft, drug sales, robberies, gun smuggling, car jacking, extortion, rape, prostitution, witness intimidation, assaults, extortion, murder…and the list goes on. In the old days, they only had illegal aliens from El Salvador as members. Today, they recruit illegal aliens from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and on occasion a few US citizens. They rule by violence and have been known to hack their enemies to death with machetes to create a strong psychological effect in the neighborhoods in which they operate.

If that isn’t bad enough, in 2004, Adnan El-Shukrijumah an Al-Qaeda leader suspected in the planning of 9/11 was spotted at meetings with Mara Salvatrucha leaders in both Mexico and Honduras. Intelligence sources indicate Al-Qaeda was attempting to establish an alliance with Mara Salvatrucha in an attempt to infiltrate the U.S. Mara Salvatrucha could rightfully be classified as both domestic and international terrorists. It would seem that terrorism is alive and well and may be on our very own shores.
PERMALINK:
Grand Ol' Perspective: Mara Salvatrucha coming soon, to a theater near you | Planet JH News Article: Near JH

Leave a Comment