|
Creating a Monster: MS-13 and How United States Immigration Policy Produced "The World's Most Dangerous Criminal Gang"
Casey Kovacic*
I. Introduction
Mara Salvatrucha (which roughly translates to "Gang of Salvadoran Guys") or "MS-13" as it is commonly known, formed on the streets of Los Angeles following the mass exodus of Salvadorans during the country's brutal civil war in the late 1980s.[1] It has been referred to by mainstream media as both "the most dangerous gang in America"[2] and "the world's most dangerous gang."[3] As the gang grew, the United States government took note.[4] It expanded immigration and criminal laws to permit law enforcement and immigration agents to send many gang members back to their home countries in Central America.[5] The result was a homeland explosion of gang membership and violence, wrecking havoc on poor Central American communities and eventually returning to the United States more powerful than ever.[6]
In the roughly twenty five years since its inception, MS-13 has turned into a truly international gang with members in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and throughout the United States.[7] This article discusses the gang's origins in Los Angeles and how the flawed immigration policies of the United States are directly responsible for MS-13's massive membership and violent global effects. It concludes by proposing several effective remedies to control the gang's reach rather than simply shifting our nation's problems elsewhere.
II. The Origins and Expansion of MS-13
In the 1980s, as the United States spent five billion dollars to support the El Salvadoran government in its civil war against a communist insurrection, more than one million Salvadorans, roughly one-fifth of the country's population, fled the country to seek peace and economic prosperity in the United States.[8] Most ended up in Southern California.[9] It was there, on the streets of the Pico Union and Westlake neighborhoods of Los Angeles, that Salvadoran youths bonded together.[10] The young immigrants, seeking protection against the established Mexican-American gangs of the area, formed a gang of their own.[11] Many of the members had fought with the leftist guerillas during the civil war while others were battle hardened by the bloodshed they witnessed.[12] In either case, most of the founding gang members were intimately familiar with violence.[13] The streets of Los Angeles served as a "finishing school" for the members of MS-13 as they learned quickly the importance of organization and violence to survive.[14] Within a decade, MS-13 had become one of the largest and most violent gangs in Southern California.[15]
As the gang grew, members accumulated "removable" criminal offenses for which they were often deported back to Central America.[16] The deported members returned to a country beset with post-war despair and chaos, and the disaffected youth population served as an ideal recruiting base for the growing gang.[17] The Salvadoran cliques of MS-13 were even more violent than their northern counterparts.[18] According to reports, of the approximately 2,500 murders in El Salvador in 2004, roughly one-third were MS-13 related.15
The result of the gang's activities in Central America was the creation of a world-wide gang. Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") estimates that MS-13 has 10,000 members in 42 states, and an additional 50,000 members live in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.16
III. United States' Government Efforts to Combat MS-13
A. Legislative Efforts
In the late 1980s, in response to the increase in both illegal immigration and drug-related criminal activity, Congress began to make significant changes in federal immigration laws.[19] The first step taken by Congress was to add to the Immigration and Nationality Act a list of criminal offenses for which a "criminal alien" could be removed.[20] These crimes, considered "aggravated felonies," included "any drug trafficking crime . . . or any illicit trafficking in any firearms or destructive devices."[21] As a result, for the purposes of removal, drug and firearm trafficking was now equal to crimes such as murder for non-citizens.[22]
Throughout the 1990s, the list of crimes considered to be "aggravated felonies" for the purposes of removal continued to increase.[23] The Immigration Act of 1990 added various offenses, the most prominent being "any crime of violence."[24] At this time, Congress also included money laundering-related crimes as well as drug trafficking offenses.[25]
In 1994, Congress once again broadened the category of deportable "aggravated felonies."[26] The crimes added included several theft related offenses, receipt of stolen property, child pornography, racketeering, prostitution-related offenses, espionage, treason, tax fraud, tax evasion, "alien" smuggling, and document fraud.[27]
Congress again expanded the "aggravated felony" category in 1996, passing the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA") and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act ("IIRIRA").[28] Under the IIRIRA, felony abuse of a minor and rape offenses were added to the list of aggravated felonies.[29] Under the AEDPA, Congress added commercial bribery, counterfeiting, forgery, trafficking in stolen vehicles, obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery of a witness, running an illegal gambling business, transporting people for the purpose of prostitution, failure to appear in court for felony charges, and unauthorized re-entry into the United States.[30]
Three major criticisms arose with the passing of the AEDPA and the IIRIRA.[31] First, the two acts greatly increased the number of non-violent offenses for which immigrants could now be removed.[32] A second criticism, specifically with regards to the IIRIRA, was that it applied the amended definition of aggravated felony retroactively.[33] The backlash of this was that non-citizens, including permanent legal residents who had lived in the United States for a while, could be deported for offenses committed in the distant past.[34] A third criticism was that the newly passed acts almost entirely eliminated equitable relief from being removed.[35] For instance, the IIRIRA eliminated a non-citizen's successful rehabilitation as a factor in the government's decision to detain and deport.[36]
As the aggravated felony category expanded, so did the number of people identified as "criminal aliens" and the American public became increasingly worried about their presence.[37] Even in the absence of evidence, immigrants were blamed for the increase in drug trafficking and violent crime in urban neighborhoods.[38] In response to the growing concern, the government began to target those immigrants most commonly linked to crime - immigrant gang members.[39]
B. Efforts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service
The first action taken by the government occurred in 1992 when the Immigration and Naturalization Service ("INS") established the Violent Gang Task Force to work with local law enforcement officials to investigate and deport immigrant gang members illegally in the United States.[40] The Violent Gang Task Force also removed immigrants with legal permanent residence in the United States who had committed a specified felony.[41] The Violent Gang Task Force had an immediate impact, in that approximately seventy Salvadoran gang members were formally deported in 1993.[42] From 1996 to 1997, the task force arrested 4,400 immigrants with many eventually being deported.[43]
While the INS was cracking down on immigrant gang members, it was also removing non-gang member immigrants based on felony convictions.[44] In 1997, the INS removed 34,000 immigrants based on criminal convictions.[45] In 1998, the number soared to 61,000.[46]
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, government efforts to remove "criminal aliens" increased.[47] In 2003, after the reorganization of the government's immigration agencies, new strategies were used to deport criminal gang members.[48]
C. Operation Community Shield
In February 2005, the newly formed Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") launched Operation Community Shield.[49] The original goal of Operation Community Shield was to dismantle one specific gang, MS-13, by performing the following duties:
Under Operation Community Shield, ICE:
Partners with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, in the United States and abroad, to develop a comprehensive and integrated approach in conducting criminal investigations and other law enforcement operations against violent street gangs and others who pose a threat to public safety.
Identifies violent street gangs and develops intelligence on their membership, associates, criminal activities and international movements.
Deters, disrupts and dismantles gang operations by tracing and seizing cash, weapons and other assets derived from criminal activities.
Seeks prosecution and/or removal of alien gang members from the United States.
Works closely with our attaché offices throughout Latin America and foreign law enforcement counterparts in gathering intelligence, sharing information and conducting coordinated enforcement operations.
Conducts outreach efforts to increase public awareness about the fight against violent street gangs.[50]
Two months after it was initiated, the operation was expanded to include all violent gang members including those from long established gangs such as the Latin Kings, Mexican Mafia, Bloods, Crips, Nortenos, and Surenos.[51]
According to ICE issued reports, Operation Community Shield has been successful.[52] Since its inception, 7,655 street gang members and associates have been arrested.[53] Of those arrested, 107 were gang leaders and 2,555 had "violent criminal histories."[54]
Despite ICE's self-proclaimed success, there are major criticisms about the agency's actions. In order to track down immigrant gang members, ICE does not develop its own list of suspects to target. Rather, local law enforcement agencies create their own lists and then share the names with ICE.[55] ICE then helps the local agencies arrest, detain, and remove the gang members.[56] The problem lies in the definition of "criminal street gang member." Currently, "criminal street gang member" is undefined and, as a result, officers have substantial discretion in deciding who to arrest.[57]
Furthermore, ICE agents have the ability to remove immigration violators incorrectly identified as criminal gang members even where there is no state law for prosecuting them.[58] The statistics support the argument that ICE agents are asserting their vaguely defined powers as far as possible. Since its inception, 70 percent of those removed under Operation Community Shield were not charged with crimes but were removed based solely on immigration violations.[59]
This system allows a wide-range of abuses, given the lack of laws governing the local law enforcement officials and ICE agents. Law enforcement officials increasingly rely on stereotyping and profiling to identify possible suspects.[60] The lack of criminal procedure related laws governing immigrant officials has resulted in other abuses as well. During a recent raid in Greensport, New York, residents were shocked to watch police officers enter their neighbors' homes without warrants, a tactic that has been used with increased frequency in recent years.[61] In the absence of obtaining a judicial warrant, law enforcement agents can legally enter a person's home only with consent.[62] However, agents have broad authority to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.[63] ICE agents have successfully sidestepped the Fourth Amendment's protection against illegal searches and seizures, and challenges to the constitutional limits of immigration-based home raids remain unsettled.[64]
Another negative is that programs such as Operation Community Shield reinforce stereotypes that many United States citizens have of immigrants and their involvement in criminal activities.[65] Because the operation has been successful in removing "criminal aliens," otherwise innocent people who are in the United States illegally are treated as criminals and perceived as such by the American public.[66]
D. Efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
In addition to ICE, the FBI has also initiated efforts to control MS-13.[67] In 2004, after several high profile murders in the Washington D.C. suburbs, the FBI created the "MS-13 Task Force."[68] The taskforce was the first nationwide effort to target a single street gang.[69] The current task force is housed at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. and serves as a "national repository for MS-13 intelligence."[70] The task force "discerns trends, prioritizes targets and diagrams whatever leadership structure might exist" in MS-13.[71] In addition, one of the primary goals of the task force is to have greater information sharing between the United States, Mexico, and Central America.[72] FBI agents from the United States share information with Central American agents about gang member movement and known associates.[73] Salvadoran agents also visit the task force's regional office to share MS-13 expertise and intelligence.[74]
The FBI claims that the MS-13 Task Force is only part of a larger anti-gang initiative that will eventually include a $10 million "gang-intelligence" center in Washington, D.C.[75]
The techniques currently used by the FBI are the same as those used against the Sicilian Mafia.[76] In order to get convictions, evidence is needed.[77] Whereas the FBI successfully recruited informants to topple the Sicilian Mafia, informants have proved much more elusive in MS-13.[78] According to sources, the FBI is usually able to recruit as informants one in three people approached.[79] The success rate is only one in twenty with MS-13 informants.[80]
III. Global Effects of United States Policies
By deporting 50,000 immigrants with criminal records over the past twelve years, ICE (and the INS before it) and the FBI believed that they were fighting crime and solving a significant social problem.[81] But the intended purpose of breaking up the MS-13 gang badly backfired. MS-13 has successfully spread across Central America and back to the United States.[82] Members of MS-13 who arrived in the United States in the 1980s as young kids returned to El Salvador in the 1990s as full-fledged gang members, bringing with them organization and personalities hardened by time spent in United States penitentiaries.[83]
A. Central America Served as a Fertile Ground for Recruiting
When the deportees arrived back in Central America, they underwent what amounted to a reverse cultural shock. Most had fled their homeland with their families at a young age; as a result, they returned to an unfamiliar country.[84] Many were raised speaking English, were unfamiliar with local dialects and customs, and had few remaining ties to their original communities.[85] The result was that MS-13 members and fellow deportees depended on a gang network to survive in the strange land.[86]
In the meantime, El Salvador was undergoing its own transformation. The twelve-year civil war left the country in chaos.[87] A major flaw with the United States removal policy was that, in many instances, the United States government failed to alert receiving countries that convicted criminals were being deported to their countries.[88] As a result, when many deportees arrived back home, no one knew who they were and how to prepare for their arrival.[89] In 1998, when INS deportations to El Salvador peaked at 5,300, Salvadoran officials estimated that sixteen percent of those deported arrived with "grave antecedents" for criminal behavior.[90] This was the statistical equivalent to releasing 1,300 violent felons in the middle of Chicago during a year.[91]
Thus, the receiving governments were unable to prepare their countries for the potent mix that a spreading gang would create with their own disenfranchised youth. In a region with a large youth population (according to the United Nations, 45 percent of Central Americans are age 15 or younger)[92], extreme poverty, and large unemployment numbers[93], the MS-13 gang found a fertile recruiting base and its membership grew rapidly in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.[94]
As of 2005, the number of gang members in El Salvador was estimated at 10,000 "core members" and 20,000 "young associates."[95] The majority of these gang members were in MS-13 or the rival Mara 18, another gang founded in Los Angeles.[96] Gang members congregate in or around San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where officials estimate more than 20,000 full-fledged members of either MS-13 or Mara 18 reside.[97] According to San Salvador's police chief, Eduardo Linares, "Maras control the entire city."[98] As a result, San Salvador has become Latin America's most dangerous city according to the World Bank; nearly one in three residents of the city has been a victim of a crime.[99] Despite the gang's large population of San Salvador, nearly every other town in El Salvador today is controlled by either MS-13 or Mara 18.[100] In 1998, at the peak of INS deportations to El Salvador, there were more than 6,000 homicides in the country, a number equal to that at the climax of the country's civil war in 1983.[101]
In Honduras, the estimated gang population is now close to 40,000.[102] To put these numbers in perspective, both El Salvador and Honduras are relatively small countries with populations of only seven million and 7.6 million people respectively.[103] In El Salvador, fifteen municipalities are said to be essentially governed by MS-13 or Mara 18.[104] Due in a large part to MS-13, Honduras recently reported a murder rate of 154 per 100,000 people, a number more than twice the rate in Colombia, a county mired in a civil war.[105]
B. Using Prisons to their Advantage
Roughly 60 percent of the gang members in El Salvadoran prisons have either been deported from the United States or fled the United States to evade prosecution.[106] As a result, El Salvadoran prisons have become the nerve centers for the gang's international operations.[107] Trapped in jail with nothing to do, members of MS-13 began to organize.[108] The structure of the gang became much stronger as a result.[109]
Most members are housed at one particular prison, the Ciudad Barrios, to avoid the riots that result from mixing prisoners from different gangs.[110] It is at Ciudad Barrios, 2,300 miles from the gang's birthplace in Los Angeles, where many of the gang's current activities are dictated.[111] According to Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker, the prisons of El Salvador serve as "a college for MS-13."[112] Over the years, prison guards have been bribed to smuggle in cell phones allowing the gang's leaders to communicate with each other all over North and Central America.[113]
C. Central American Government Crackdowns
As MS-13 became more prevalent in Central America, the governments in the countries hardest hit took turns trying to control the gang. Honduras was first following the election of Ricardo Madura as president in November 2001.[114] Under pressure from President Madura, whose son was killed in an attempted kidnapping that was likely gang-related, Honduras enacted several "zero tolerance" laws.[115] The laws allowed the police to arrest citizens merely on the basis of "illicit associations" and to imprison them for up to 12 years based entirely on suspected gang activity.[116] Many people arrested under these strict rules were selected solely because of the distinctive and extensive tattoos that adorn the bodies of most MS-13 members.[117] Within one year of the passing of the law, the population of the Honduran prison system was 200 percent beyond capacity, resulting in massive prison riots in April 2003 and May 2004.[118]
El Salvador followed the Honduran lead, enacting two anti-gang laws.[119] In July 2003, El Salvador adopted the Ley Mano Dura ("hard hand" law) that reportedly resulted in 8,000 arrests, although most charges were eventually dropped because of lack of evidence.[120] In 2004, Plan Super Mano Dura ("Operation Super Hard Hand") was enacted and, within a year, 70 MS-13 leaders were behind bars.[121]
Although the anti-gang laws in Honduras and El Salvador have helped to remove suspected gang members from the streets, there are several major flaws with the system. Above all, the laws essentially criminalize mere association and allow "officers to randomly apprehend and book gang members."[122] People are arrested based simply on how they look and what they wear.[123] By removing MS-13 members to countries with such widespread human rights and due process violations, the United States contributes to serious abuses of authority.[124]
Furthermore, there is sufficient evidence that the laws have only added to the region's violence and gang growth. Shortly after the enactment of the anti-gang laws in Honduras, members of MS-13 retaliated with several random acts of violence, including a dozen decapitated bodies found in Honduras and Guatemala with warning messages attached.[125] In December 2004, in retaliation to the crackdown, MS-13 members opened fire on a bus in Honduras killing 28 people.[126] Targeting the gang's leaders also proved to be fruitless as new leaders ascended to take their place, and the walls of the prisons hardly prevented older leaders from still giving orders.[127]
As the members of MS-13 began to feel more and more heat, they sought new territory, first in Mexico and then back to the United States.[128] Many members landed in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and found work as low-level gunmen for the area's drug cartels.[129] The gang soon learned to capitalize on the abundance of human smuggling taking place in the region.[130] In addition, gang members served as guides, charging as much at $1,500 to take immigrants to Mexican border towns on their way to the United States.[131] Rumors even surfaced a few years ago that MS-13 members met with Adnan el-Shukrijumah, a high level al Qaeda operative, in Honduras to discuss a possible agreement to smuggle al Qaeda members into the United States through Mexico.[132]
IV. Domestic Effects Resulting from United States Policies
After the government crackdowns in Honduras and El Salvador, the flow was reversed as members of MS-13 gradually made their way back to the United States and, in recent years, gang membership has seen a rapid growth.[133] As mentioned earlier, the gang now operates in 33 states with roughly 10,000 members in the United States.[134]
Although the largest concentration of MS-13 members is in Los Angeles and the Washington, D.C. area, the gang has spread to such places as Alaska, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Nebraska operating in cliques.[135] Rural Texas has proved to be the gang's fastest growing region because of its proximity to the United States - Mexico border.[136] These less populated regions are not accustomed to gang activity and gang-related crimes, which makes investigating and preventing criminal activities very difficult.[137] Also, gang culture spreads quickly in these remote areas.[138] According to Wes McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Association, "everything gets bastardized as it leaves the center."[139]
Having cliques all over the country, in both densely populated metropolitan areas and small rural areas, causes major difficulties for the FBI's M-13 Task Force and other law enforcement officers trying to control the gang's activities. One reason is that the decentralized nature of MS-13 has no clear structure or hierarchy of leadership, which makes it difficult for agents to track and disrupt gang activity.[140] It also appears that members often move between cliques and between the United States and Central America, making it difficult to associate certain people with activities in a particular region.[141] Because of the decentralization of MS-13, the criminal activities of MS-13 cliques also vary in different regions.[142] For instance, law enforcement officials on the East Coast have noticed that the weapon of choice for MS-13 members in their region is a machete.[143] On the West Coast, machete attacks are rare.[144] Another example is that while drug trafficking is the most common criminal activity for the gang's North Carolina-based members, gang-on-gang violence is more prominent in the neighboring state of Virginia.[145]
The rural threat of MS-13 made national headlines in 2003 when Brenda Paz was found murdered in Shenandoah County, Virginia.[146] Paz, a pregnant 17 year-old was a high-level member in Normandies Locos Salvatruchas, an elite MS-13 clique based in Los Angeles.[147] Paz was murdered after she agreed to enter the federal witness protection program and testify against MS-13.[148]
Another reason tracking the gang has grown increasingly difficult relates to the gang's notorious tattoos. For years, gang members' bodies and faces were often elaborately adorned with tattoos, most commonly with the number "13."[149] But, as a testament to the gang's evolving organization, MS-13 leaders have started telling members to remove prominent tattoos from their faces, necks and arms to avoid targeting from law enforcement.[150] Members with traces of removed tattoos now deny involvement and tell officers that the tattoos are merely representative of past involvement with the gang.[151]
V. Proposals for Remedy
The flawed immigrant removal program of the United States has had a direct causal affect on the growth of MS-13. Now that the gang has grown to some 60,000 members worldwide, the prospect of decreasing the violence and recruiting of new gang members is daunting. However, several remedies should be seriously considered.
A. Providing Advance Notice to Receiving Countries
A logical procedure to help receiving countries prepare for the arrival of incoming MS-13 members from the United States is to provide those countries with advance notice. This is something the INS and later ICE failed to do on many occasions. Simply dropping off gang members with violent criminal backgrounds is both unfair and dangerous. The requisite notice should include both the date of arrival and the deportee's criminal history, which would allow a receiving country to prepare for the arrival. Advance notice will provide receiving countries with an opportunity to implement programs to acclimate deportees to a society and culture with which most are unfamiliar and ease the culture shock.[152] Another benefit is that the receiving country can attempt to contact the deportee's relatives, giving the deportee a place to go rather than being forced to join other gang members for protection and support.[153]
B. Providing Aid to Receiving Countries
Another remedy is for the United States to provide direct aid to those countries that receive deportees. The United States can provide the financial resources, training, and other expertise necessary to create effective law enforcement agencies capable of handling a gang of the magnitude of MS-13 without violating basic civil rights. This is something that the receiving countries presently lack.[154] The United States can also help receiving countries create effective social service programs to reintegrate the deportees into the local culture.[155] Aid could also come in the form of tangible objects such as new or used computers. With proper training, computers could be used to assemble and analyze data on gang trends and movement. A computer network could also create a continuing dialogue between United States and Central American law enforcement agents and experts to discuss current trends, tactics, and information.
C. Providing Equitable Relief
Another possible remedy is to provide equitable relief to deportable "criminal aliens" that meet certain requirements.[156] Equitable relief could be similar to that which was available before the passing of the AEDPA and IIRIRA more than a decade ago. Before those laws were enacted, the Attorney General had the authority under § 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to grant discretionary deportation waivers to "aliens" meeting certain criteria.[157] When the AEDPA and IIRIRA were enacted, the ability for equitable relief was essentially eliminated.[158]
Equitable relief could potentially achieve three things. First, it could decrease the number of "criminal aliens" who are deported based solely on criminal offenses committed well in the past. Second, because providing equitable relief could likely decrease the amount of deportations, it could alleviate many of the problems that confront receiving countries.[159] As previously mentioned, under the current system, receiving countries are overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of thousands of deportees and do not have the resources to adequately respond.[160] Finally, equitable relief could significantly reduce the substantial costs incurred by the United States to implement the current removal policy.
D. Gang Intervention Counseling
The United States can also focus more on discouraging gang involvement in the first place through education and intervention.[161] As previously mentioned, the gang has found a fertile recruiting base in a youthful population.[162] Programs involving former MS-13 members could be used to discourage impressionable youth, helping them realize that there are alternatives to a life of crime. A recent Los Angeles Times article profiled former MS-13 member Ernesto "Satan" Deras.[163] As a gang intervention counselor with a nonprofit organization called Community in Schools near Los Angeles, his job "takes him to the Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall. . . to dark street corners to calm tensions after drive-by shootings, to gang meetings at local parks to broker truces, and to his Pentacostal church in Van Nuys, where he invites gang members trying to start a new life."[164]
Programs such as Community in Schools and mentors such as Deras are effective alternatives to immigration crackdowns. They focus on trying to understand what immigrant youth are experiencing and provide a forum at which they can discuss and consider alternatives to gang membership and violence. Removal, on the other hand, simply pushes the problem elsewhere. Under the current policy, gang members who have the ability to change and contribute to society are instead incarcerated and/or deported with few choices but to depend on their gang allegiances for survival.
VI. Conclusion: The Rise of MS-13 is a Direct Result of United States Policy
MS-13's rapid international growth can be directly attributed to the severely flawed immigration removal program implemented by the United States. Simply stated, removal does not solve crime. It just shifts it somewhere else.[165] By relying on removal to control MS-13, the United States government not only avoided dealing directly with the threat of a growing gang, but also shifted the responsibility to several small Central American countries that did not have the resources or expertise to confront the threat. The result was the gang's explosion in Honduras and El Salvador. Current problems with MS-13 could have been avoided by accepting the gang as a problem early on, rather than shifting the problem elsewhere. The United States should have implemented effective and progressive programs to control the gang domestically while its membership and reach were still somewhat limited.
While the United States must accept blame for helping to create a now international criminal threat, potential remedies are available. Decision-makers must acknowledge that there is a problem and focus on achieving a global solution that combats the gang not only domestically but also abroad. There must be the political will to commit financial resources and expertise to help our neighbors diminish the power of MS-13 and its progeny, while at the same time promoting tolerance and basic civil rights. There must also be the realization that most immigrants, documented or undocumented, are not threats to our nation's well-being. Until then, MS-13 will continue to grow and wreck havoc as it provides a viable alternate support system to disenfranchised youth and other marginalized members of our society.
*J.D. Willamette University College of Law, 2008; B.A., University of Oregon, 2004. Public Defender, Vancouver, Washington. The author wishes to thank the editorial staff of the Gonzaga Journal of International Law for their thoughtful editing assistance.
[1] Rich Connell & Robert J. Lopez, Gang Sweeps Result in 103 arrests; In a Nationwide Action, Authorities Round Up Members of MS-13, Formed in L.A. and Now Involved in Smuggling, Trafficking, and Murder, L.A. Times, Mar. 15, 2005, at B1; see also Arian Campo-Flores, The Most Dangerous Gang in America, Newsweek, Mar. 28, 2005, at 22.
[2] Arian Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[3] World's Most Dangerous Gang (National Geographic Documentary 2006), available at http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/2564/Overview (last visited Dec. 11, 2008).
[4] Anna Arana, How the Street Gangs Took Central America, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2005, available at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050501faessay84310/ana-arana/how-the-street-gangs-took-central-america.html (last visited Jan. 4, 2009).
[5] See id.
[6] See id.
[7] See id.
[8] Tracy Wilkinson, Gangs Find Fresh Turf in El Salvador; Whether by Choice or by Force, Man L.A. Youths Have Returned to Their Homeland Bringing With Them a Violent Subculture, L.A. Times, June 16, 1994, at A1; see also Colin McMahon, Back From L.A. With a Graduate Education in Mayhem; Salvadoran Gang Members Learn From U.S. Mean Streets, Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1995, at N1.
[9] Wilkinson, supra note 8.
[10] McMahon, supra note 8; see also Connell & Lopez, supra note 1.
[11] Victor J. Blue, Gangs Without Borders: Violent Central American Gangs Were Born in the U.S.A, Returned to Their Homeland and Now Migrate Back and Forth Between Here and There, The S. F. Chro., April 2, 2006, at E1.
[12]Chris Kraul et al., L.A. Violence Crosses the Line; A Brutal band Born Near MacArthur Park Has Spread to 33 Other States and 5 Countries, L.A. Times, May 15, 2005, at A1.
[13] See id.
[14] McMahon, supra note 8.
[15] Connell & Lopez, supra note 1.
[16] Teresa Borden, El Salvador Racked By Gangs; Some Flee Rampant Violence to Atlanta, The Atlanta J-Const., Jan. 19, 2005, at 1F.
[17] Id.
[18] Borden, supra note 16; El Salvador Racked By Gangs; Some Flee Rampant Violence to Atlanta, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan. 19, 2005, at 1F; see generally Scott Wallace, You Must Go Home Again: Deported Los Angeles Gang Members are Crime Problem in El Salvador, Harper's Magazine, Aug. 1, 2000, at 47 (a possible reason for the violence was that the United States supplied the Salvadoran government with much of their infantry weapons during the war, and as a result tens of thousands of automatic rifles, bazookas, land mines, and hand grenades remained in the country, unused once the war was over).
15 Borden, supra note 16.
16 Cara Buckley, A Fearsome Gang and Its Wannabes, N.Y. Times, Aug. 19, 2007, at WK3.
[19] Jennifer M. Chacon, Whose Community Shield?: Examining the Removal of the "Criminal Street Gang Member," 2007 U. Chi. Legal. F. 317, 321 (2007).
[20] Id.
[21] Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-690, § 7342, 102 Stat. 4181, 4469.
[22] Chacon, supra note 19, at 322.
[23] See id.
[24] Id.
[25] Immigration Act of 1990 § 501(a)(2)-(3).
[26] Chacon, supra note 19, at 322.
[27] Immigration and Nationality Technical Corrections Act of 1994, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(2000).
[28] 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (2000).
[29] Chacon, supra note 19, at 323.
[30] IIRIRA § 321(a)(1), 110 Stat at 3009-627; AEDPA § 440(e), 110 Stat at 1277.
[31] Dawn Marie Johnson, 27 J. Legis. 477, 479 (2001); Teresa A. Miller, Citizenship & Severity: Recent Immigration Reforms and the New Penology, 17 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 611, 634 (2003); Tara Pinkham, Assessing the Collateral International Consequences of the U.S.' Removal Policy, 12 Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 223 (2006).
[32] Johnson, supra note 31, at 479.
[33] Miller, supra note 31, at 634.
[34] Id.
[35] Tara Pinkham, Assessing the Collateral International Consequences of the U.S.' Removal Policy, 12 Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 223 (2006).
[36] Miller, supra note 33.
[37] Chacon, supra note 19, at 324.
[38] Id.
[39] Id.
[40] Wilkinson, supra note 8.
[41] Id.
[42] Id.
[43] William Branigin, INS Pursuing Aliens in Urban Gangs; New Immigration Law Aids Agents in Drive to Put Criminals Out of the Country, Wash. Post, May 2, 1997, at A2.
[44] Chacon, supra note 19, at 326.
[45] Department of Homeland Security, 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, at 96-97 (2006).
[46] Id.
[47] Chacon, supra note 19, at 326.
[48] Id. at 327.
[49] Operation Community Shield: Targeting Violent Transnational Gangs, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, available at http://www.ice.gov/pi/investigations/comshield/ (last visited Nov. 17, 2008) [hereinafter ICE].
[50] See id.
[51] Chacon, supra note 19, at 329.
[52] ICE, supra note 49.
[53] See id.
[54] Id.
[55] Id.
[56] Id.
[57] Nina Bernstein, Immigrant Workers Caught in Net Cast for Gangs, N.Y. Times, Nov. 25, 2007, at A41.
[58] Chacon, supra note 19, at 332.
[59] Id.
[60] Id. at 337.
[61] Bernstein, supra note 57.
[62] Id.
[63] Id.
[64] Id.
[65] Chacon, supra note 19, at 337.
[66] See id.
[67] Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[68] See id.
[69] Kraul et al., supra note 12.
[70] Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[71] Id.
[72] Danna Harman, U.S. Steps Up Battle Against Salvadoran Gang MS-13, USA Today, Feb. 23, 2005.
[73] See id.
[74] Capo-Flores, supra note 1.
[75] Harman, supra note 72.
[76] Out of the Underworld - Criminal Gangs in the Americas, Economist, Jan. 7, 2006 (U.S. Edition).
[77] See id.
[78] Id.
[79] See id.
[80] Id.
[81] Robert J. Lopez et al., MS:13; An International Franchise; Gang Uses Deportation to Its Advantage to Flourish in U.S.; Mara Salvatrucha is Rooted Locally, But It Has Become a Force in Central America and the Washington Area. U.S. Policy Provided Unintended Aid, L.A. Times, Oct. 30, 2005, at A1.
[82] Id.
[83] Wallace, supra note 18.
[84] Wilkinson, supra note 8.
[85] Id.
[86] Id.
[87] Id.
[88] Pinkham, supra note 35, at 228.
[89] Arana, supra note 4, at 98.
[90] Wallace, supra note 18.
[91] Id.
[92] Arana, supra note 4.
[93] Wallace, supra note 18 (30 percent of El Salvador is "underemployed," while 25 percent live in "absolute" poverty).
[94] Chacon, supra note 19, at 351.
[95] Arana, supra note 4.
[96] Blue, supra note 11.
[97] Wallace, supra note 18.
[98] Id.
[99] Id.
[100] Id.
[101] Id.
[102] Arana, supra note 4.
[103] Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book, El Salvador, available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/es.html (last visited Dec. 21, 2008); Central Intelligence Agency, World Fact Book, Honduras, available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ho.html (last visited Dec. 21, 2008).
[104] Id.
[105] Arana, supra note 4.
[106] Lopez et al., supra note 81.
[107] Id.
[108] Economist, supra note 76.
[109] Id.
[110] Lopez et al., supra note 81.
[111] Id.
[112] Id.
[113] Id.
[114] Id.
[115] Arana, supra note 4.
[116] Chacon, supra note 19, at 354.
[117] Id.
[118] Arana, supra note 4.
[119] Bowden, supra note 16.
[120] Id.
[121] Id.
[122] Chacon, supra note 19, at 354.
[123] Bowden, supra note 16.
[124] Chacon, supra note 19, at 340.
[125] Arana, supra note 4; see also Andrew Gumbel, Claims of Foul Play as 100 Die in Honduran Prison Fire, The Independent (London), May 18th, 2004, at 27.
[126] 60 Minutes: The Fight Against MS-13 (CBS television broadcast Dec. 4, 2005), available at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/01/60minutes/main1090941_page2.shtml (last visited April 17, 2008).
[127] Arana, supra note 4.
[128] Id.
[129] Kraul et al., supra note 12.
[130] Connell et al., supra note 81.
[131] Kraul et al., supra note 12.
[132] Andrew Papachristos, Gang World; Globalization at Work, Foreign Policy, March 1, 2005, at 48.
[133] Kraul et al., supra note 12.
[134] Id.
[135] Jeffrey Kidder, Gang Deterrence and the Community Protection Act of 2005: Why the Federal Response to MS-13 is Flawed and How it Will Have an Adverse Impact in Your State, 33 N.E. J. on Crim. Civ. Con. 639, 645 (2007); see also Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[136] David McLemore, For Witness to MS-13 Crimes, Betrayal Was a Death Sentence: Teen Gang Member ‘Was Trying to Change Her Life' by Testifying, The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 29, 2006, at 1A.
[137] Economist, supra note 61.
[138] Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[139] Id.
[140] Kidder, supra note 135, at 645.
[141] McLemore, supra note 136.
[142] Id.
[143] Campo-Flores, supra note 1.
[144] Id.
[145] Id.
[146] Jamie Stockwell, In MS-13, a Culture of Brutality and Begging: Gang's Women Panhandle, Men Plot in Motels, Testimony Shows, Wash. Post, May, 2, 2005, at A1.
[147] Id.
[148] McLemore, supra note 136.
[149] Ruth Morris, Telltale Tattoos; Once Badges of Honor, the Marks are Helping Law Enforcement Identify, Locate MS-13 Gang Members as they Migrate Across the United States and into South Florida, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, May, 15, 2005, at 1H.
[150] McClemore, supra note 136.
[151] Id.
[152] Margaret Taylor & T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Deportation of Criminal Aliens: A Geopolitical Perspective, Inter-American Dialogue, June 1998.
[153] Id.
[154] Id.
[155] Id.
[156] Pinkham, supra note 35, at 242.
[157] 8 U.S.C. § 1182(c) (1982).
[158] 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (2000).
[159] Id. at 243.
[160] Arana, supra note 4.
[161] Rich Connell & Robert J. Lopez, Intervention Offers Hope Where Police and Border Crackdowns Fail, L.A. Times, Dec. 26, 2005, at B1.
[162] Arana, supra note 4.
[163] Id.
[164] Id.
[165] Chacon, supra note 19, at 350.
|
