Mara Salvatrucha

Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the 18th Street gang,are heavily involved in smuggling operations between the United States and Latin America. Drugs (banned but in demand) and human beings (restricted but useful for exploitation in scut jobs and as sex slaves) are smuggled north. Cash (proceeds of drug sales) and guns (tools of drug trafficker armies) are smuggled south. It’s a natural fit. Mexico has strict gun laws. The United States is a wide open gun bazaar. Almost any nitwit can get into the gun smuggling business. But the people smuggling guns south today are not nitwits. They are highly connected, smart, and ruthlessly organized ... Read Full Story

MS-13, which is the abbreviation of Mara Salvatrucha, was started in Los Angeles, California during the civil war in El Salvador. In 2005, the FBI declared MS-13 to be the most dangerous gang in the United States and the entire world. Who are they? Members of Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, who are mostly Salvadoran nationals or first generation Salvadoran-Americans, but also Hondurans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and other Central and South American immigrants. And according to our recent national threat assessment of this growing, mobile street gang, they could be operating in your community...now or in the near future. MS-13 gets the majority of ... Read Full Story

Mara Salvatrucha is a gang that originated in Los Angeles and spread to Central America and parts of the United States. Mara Salvatrucha is therefore composed of many loosely-connected gangs or factions of the same name, known as "cliques". The gangs' names are commonly abbreviated as MS, Mara, and MS-13, and are composed mostly of Salvadorans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans. Text: wiki Read Full Story

They have exported their gang culture — learned by expatriates returned from undocumented existence in the big cities of the United States — to other countries in Central and South America, re-exporting their influence back to the U.S., moving beyond petty thievery, flashy tattoos and thuggish violence, to drug-trafficking and large-scale extortion.For the last three decades, successive Salvadoran governments have tried to curtail the two Maras. In the 1990s the Salvadoran government instituted a policy that became known as the Mano Duro (Strong Hand), that saw thousands of gang members jailed. But Mano Duro has not stopped the gangs. Corruption at the highest levels ... Read Full Story

Twenty-two individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area were indicted on federal racketeering and other charges arising from their participation in La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today. Seven additional individuals were also charged with non-racketeering offenses ranging from narcotics trafficking to firearms trafficking, and attempted exportation of stolen vehicles. At a news conference in San Francisco, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Joseph P. Russoniello and ICE’s Director of Investigations Marcy M. Forman outlined details of the undercover investigation, dubbed “Operation Devil Horns,” in reference to MS-13’s gang ... Read Full Story