Nearly 100 members of the MS-13 gang have been arrested and charged with various crimes by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Long Island, New York — a historic crackdown on the violent El Salvadoran gang.
Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy Sini announced on Friday that a 23-month investigation into the MS-13 gang’s ten cliques on Long Island had resulted in the arrests of 96 MS-13 gang members, including illegal aliens and those who were able to legally enter the United States.
Those 96 MS-13 gang members, whose ages range from 16 to 59-years-old, come from nine of the region’s ten cliques, and the investigation has led to more than 230 arrests of MS-13 gang members in New York state, nationwide, and in El Salvador.
Evidence was recovered as part of the investigation, including ten kilograms of cocaine, 1,000 fentanyl pills, 11 guns, and numerous machetes — the MS-13 gang’s preferred weapon for slaughtering victims. Tuni said:
As we know, MS-13 is a ruthless, savage gang which commits acts of violence to recruit, retain, and control its members and exact revenge on its rivals, as well as to extort innocent members of our community. They engage in various acts of criminality to generate money, including drug dealing, and they send portions of that money back to their leadership … in El Salvador.
Most prominently, Tuni said the investigation has “helped end” MS-13’s “New York Program,” wherein gang leaders in El Salvador had sent hundreds of El Salvadoran nationals to Long Island to build a “greater presence” in Long Island. The investigation also aided in stopping seven murder plots and other plans by MS-13 gang members to commit violence.
Last month, Tuni convened a special grand jury that issued an indictment against 64 of the 96 MS-13 gang members arrested. Those 64 members include nine leaders of the gang. The indictment comes with 77 counts of conspiracy to commit murder, first-degree assault, gang assault, operating as a major trafficker of guns and drugs, and criminal sale of drugs.
More charges are expected in the coming months.
Federal officials note that every year, the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program is widely used by the MS-13 gang to import illegal alien members into the country. Annually, about 22,000 potential recruits for the MS-13 gang are resettled throughout the country by the federal government.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder .
Crimes by
Illegal Immigrants Widespread
Across US – Sanctuaries Shouldn’t Shield
Them
By Hans A. von Spakovsky
“more Mexicans
than U.S. citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in
2018.”
Hans von
Spakovsky: Crimes by illegal immigrants widespread across US – Sanctuaries
shouldn’t shield them
The decision by a California appeals court Friday overturning
the conviction of an illegal immigrant who shot and killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015
once again put the national spotlight on the serious problem of crimes
committed by people in the U.S. illegally.
The appeals court in San Francisco overturned the conviction of Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate on a charge of being a felon in
possession of a firearm. Garcia-Zarate was earlier found not guilty of first-
and second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and assault with a
semi-automatic weapon.
Garcia-Zarate said he unwittingly
picked up a gun, which he said was wrapped in a T-shirt, and it fired
accidentally. The appeals court overturned his conviction on the firearm
possession charge because it said the judge at his trial failed to give the
jury the option of finding him not guilty on the theory that he only possessed
the gun for a moment.
Opponents of federal efforts to
enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress repeatedly claim that illegal
immigrants are “less likely” to commit crimes than U.S. citizens – and thus
represent no threat to public safety. But that’s not true when it comes to
federal crimes.
Non-citizens
constitute only about 7 percent of the U.S. population. Yet the latest data from the Justice
Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reveals that non-citizens accounted
for nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all federal arrests in 2018. Just two
decades earlier, only 37 percent of all federal arrests were non-citizens.
These arrests aren’t just for
immigration crimes. Non-citizens accounted for 24 percent of all federal drug
arrests, 25 percent of all federal property arrests, and 28 percent of all
federal fraud arrests.
In 2018, a quarter of all federal
drug arrests took place in the five judicial districts along the U.S.-Mexico
border. This reflects the ongoing activities of Mexican drug cartels. Last
year, Mexican citizens accounted for 40 percent of all federal arrests.
In fact, more Mexicans than U.S.
citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in 2018.
Migrants from Central American
countries are also accounting for a larger share of federal arrests, going from
a negligible 1 percent of such arrests in 1998 to 20 percent today.
Critics will try to downplay the
importance of the Justice Department’s report by pointing out that the majority
of crimes in the United States are handled by prosecutors in state and local
courts. But even there the data is shocking.
A
recent report from the Texas Department
of Public Safety revealed that 297,000 non-citizens had been “booked into local
Texas jails between June 1, 2011 and July 31, 2019.” So these are non-citizens
who allegedly committed local crimes, not immigration violations.
The report noted that a little
more than two-thirds (202,000) of those booked in Texas jails were later
confirmed as illegal immigrants by the federal government.
According to the Texas report,
over the course of their criminal careers those illegal immigrants were charged
with committing 494,000 criminal offenses.
In fact, more Mexicans than U.S.
citizens were arrested on charges of committing federal crimes in 2018.
Some of these cases are still
being prosecuted, but the report states that there have already been over
225,000 convictions. Those convictions represent: 500 homicides; 23,954
assaults; 8,070 burglaries; 297 kidnappings; 14,178 thefts; 2,026 robberies;
3,122 sexual assaults; 3,840 sexual offenses; 3,158 weapon charges and tens of
thousands of drug and obstruction charges
These
statistics reveal the very real danger created by sanctuary policies. In nine
self-declared sanctuary states and numerous sanctuary
cities and counties, officials refuse to hand over criminals who are known to
be in this country illegally after they have served their state or local
sentences.
This refusal to cooperate with
federal immigration officials suggests that state and local officials
supporting the sanctuary movement believe it’s better to let these criminals
return to their communities rather than being removed from this country. Not
all of their constituents would agree.
The Texas report is careful to
note that it is not claiming “foreign nationals” commit “more crimes than other
groups.” Whether that is true or not – and it is certainly true when it comes
to federal crimes – is irrelevant.
What is highly relevant to the
current debate about immigration policy is that the Texas report “identifies
thousands of crimes that should not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the perpetrators should not be here.”
We know that in Texas and around
the country some individuals would be alive today – and their families would
not be mourning their loss – if we had a secure border and an effective
interior enforcement system.
Instead of trying to obstruct
enforcement of our immigration laws, state and local officials should do
everything they can to help the feds reduce the very real – and all too often
fatal – dangers posed by criminal illegal immigrants.
One of the worst recent examples
of a state official who refuses to help federal immigration authorities carry
out their duties is North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
The
Democratic governor recently vetoed a bill that would require
local law enforcement to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Cooper
did so just days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
captured an illegal immigrant charged with first-degree rape and indecent
liberties against a child.
Acting
ICE Director: ICE Removed More Than 145,000 Criminal Aliens Last Year,
Including 10,000 Gang Members
Listen to the Article!
(CNSNews.com) - Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) made more than 105,000 criminal arrests last year and removed
more than 145,000 criminal aliens, “to include the arrests of nearly 10,000
gang members and the removal of another 6,000,” acting ICE Director Matt
Albence said Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at the
White House, Albence warned about the dangers of sanctuary cities, calling it a
“public safety matter.”
“We are here today to help the
public understand the human cost of sanctuary laws and policies, which ban and
prevent local law enforcement agencies from working with ICE to include even
the simple sharing of information about criminals already in their custody.
Laws and policies like these make us all less safe plain and simple,” he said.
Albence said that 70 percent of
ICE arrests are made at local jails and state prisons nationwide, “but we used
to make more, and we used to get more criminals off the street before sanctuary
laws and policies prevented us from doing so.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation
out there with regard to how we do our operations and what is required, so I’m
going to give a little bit of information and context to dispel some of those
myths and misinformation that’s out there,” the director said.
“One myth is the sanctuary
jurisdictions along with many politicians and members of the media continually
perpetuate is that ICE doesn’t prioritize its limited enforcement resources.
Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Albence said that 90 percent of
the people that ICE arrests in the interior of the country “are convicted
criminals, individuals who’ve been charged with a criminal violation, are
immigration fugitives or are illegal re-entrants, meaning they’ve been through
the immigration court process previously, been deported and re-entered
illegally, which is a federal felony and one of which we received 7,000
convictions for last year.”
“And immigration fugitives, to be
clear as well, are those individuals who’ve had their day in court, have
exhausted all forms of due process, have been ordered removed by an immigration
judge, and failed to comply with that removal order,” the director said.
“Many sanctuary jurisdictions
will also incorrectly assert that they cannot hand over custody of criminal
aliens in their jails unless ICE provides an arrest warrant signed by a federal
judge. Those that say that are either willfully ignorant or patently
disingenuous,” Albence said.
“The truth is that federal law
does not provide any mechanism for judicial warrants to be issued for civil
immigration violations. There is not a single judge, magistrate anywhere in
this country that has a lawful authority to issue a warrant for a civil
immigration violation. By statute, Congress has given this authority solely to
supervisory immigration officers. This is one of the ways in which our system
-- the immigration enforcement system -- differs from the criminal justice
system, and it's perfectly lawful,” he said.
Albence said that of the nearly
1,300 arrests made this week, ICE officers arrested “nearly 200 who could’ve
been arrested at the jail if the detainer had been honored.”
“Of the criminal aliens we took
into custody this week, three had convictions for manslaughter or murder. One
hundred had convictions for sexual assault or crimes, with the victims of
nearly half of them being children. Seventy had convictions for crimes
involving drugs, and more than 320 had convictions for driving under the
influence of drugs or alcohol,” he said.
MS-13 Gang: 96 Charged in Sweeping Crackdown on Long Island
The accusations included seven murder conspiracies, as well as gun running and drug trafficking.
Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney, at a news conference on Friday. Credit... Johnny Milano for The New York Times
Over the course of 150 pages, the indictment described a remarkably vast criminal enterprise. There were seven murder plots with guns, machetes and Molotov cocktails. There were assaults in bars, meetings in local bakeries and gang initiations with 13-second beatings.
Men with nicknames like Droop and Broccoli were said to have dealt in crack cocaine, fentanyl and oxycodone. Gang members had to adhere to a 20-point list of rules and regulations, including one that stated that to move up in the ranks, members had to commit at least four murders.
All of this was laid out in voluminous detail as the Suffolk County district attorney’s office announced on Friday that it had brought a series of sweeping charges against 96 members and associates of the notorious transnational street gang known as MS-13, capping a two-year investigation with a team of local, state and federal partners.
Originally founded in Los Angeles by refugees from El Salvador, MS-13 has long had a base of operations in Suffolk County, on the East End of Long Island, which has been plagued by gang violence in recent years.
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But officials said that the case revealed on Friday was the biggest crackdown ever on the group in New York, and had dealt its local cells, or cliques, a significant blow.
“The goal of this investigation was to deliver a major blow to the gang’s leadership, operations and recruitment in the our region,” Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney, told reporters at a news conference on Friday.
“As we know, MS-13 is a ruthless, savage gang,’’ he added, “which commits acts of violence to recruit, retain, and control its members and exact revenge on its rivals, as well as to extort innocent members of our community.”
The gang’s notoriety and bloody tactics have caught the attention of President Trump, who has often invoked its name and reputation as a way to justify his immigration policy. He has referred to the group as an “infestation” and to its members as “animals.” In 2018, he invited the mother of one MS-13 murder victim to be
his guest at the State of the Union address.
And on Friday, the president
went on Twitter to use the arrests as an argument for his immigration policy, saying that the gang takedown was an example of how “we are getting MS-13 gang members, and many other people that shouldn’t be here, out of our country.”
According to the federal authorities, no less than 28 murders have been attributed to MS-13 on Long Island since 2016, some of them leading to enormous public outcry.
Image
A wooded area where the bodies of four men who had been killed by MS-13 members were found in 2017. Credit... Uli Seit for The New York Times
Ms. Cuevas had been engaged in a feud with gang members in school and over social media, while Ms. Mickens was simply a friend of Ms. Cuevas’s, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were set upon.
The two-year investigation was based on a sprawling wiretap that monitored as many as 215 separate phones, officials said, and has now led to the arrests of a total of roughly 200 members of the group.
Among those charged on Friday were nine top leaders of the gang who were part of what was known as the New York Program, a strategic initiative that MS-13 launched from its home base in El Salvador to strengthen its foothold in the New York area and to spread the group’s operations along the Eastern Seaboard, law enforcement officials said.
The officials said that the New York Program was likely responsible for an uptick in violence by the group in recent years. One central function of the New York Program, the officials said, was to collect money in the New York area and send it back to MS-13 leaders in El Salvador.
The arrests included MS-13 members from nine separate cliques in Suffolk County, ranging in age from 16 to 59. They came from more than 20 cities in New York as well as from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, even Holland.
Officials identified Noe Fuentes, also known as Ghost, as the leader of the HCLS clique, one of Long Island’s largest cells, and as the head of the New York Program. Mr. Sini said that the HCLS clique, or Huntington Criminales Los Salvatrucha, and other cells on Long Island had been “decimated” by law enforcement efforts, but that the group not been entirely dismantled.
“MS-13 is an international gang,” he said. “They will attempt to recalibrate, and send individuals to take up leadership roles in Suffolk County, and that’s why we need to stay vigilant.”
In connection with the investigation, the authorities seized more than 10 kilograms of cocaine, about 1,000 pills of fentanyl, large quantities of heroin and marijuana, nine handguns, two rifles, at least 500 rounds of ammunition and numerous machetes.
Ray Donovan, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York office, which took part in the case, said that investigators had determined that MS-13 was attempting to establish what amounted to a stronghold in New York.
As part of the investigation, Mr. Donovan explained, the authorities used more than just their wiretaps. They also physically surveilled gang members and monitored their social media accounts.
MS-13 has over 50,000 members in Central America, Mr. Donovan said, adding that another 8,000 to 10,000 members are spread throughout the United States and Europe.
Working with the authorities in Suffolk County and other law enforcement agencies, Mr. Donovan said that several murders had been prevented and that investigators were able to solve three previously unsolved killings in New York and three more in Virginia, though he did not provide any details about the killings.
“This investigation, when it’s all said and done, sends a very clear message to the leadership of MS-13,” Mr. Donovan said. “New York is not your home, and it never will be your home.”
Arielle Dollinger and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999.
@ alanfeuer
A version of this article appears in print on
Dec. 21, 2019 , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scores of Arrests on Long Island In ‘Major Blow’ to MS-13 Gang
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