Posted on 01/03/2005 9:59:03 PM PST by nanak
The Mara Salvatrucha -- a large, ruthless Central American street gang linked to a recent bus massacre in Honduras whose members have been popping up along the Texas-Mexico border -- may be making its way to El Paso, police said.
"The fact we found one here (in El Paso), there is always a concern more may pop up," said Sgt. Reggie Moton, head of the El Paso Police Department's gang unit, which is monitoring the situation.
But the Maras, who could be linked to the Juárez drug cartel, are unlikely to establish a foothold in the area, law enforcement authorities said.
The Maras, which claim to have 100,000 members in Honduras alone, stretch from impoverished gang-controlled neighborhoods in El Salvador to suburban Washington, D.C. The gang's birthplace was the streets of Los Angeles.
The El Paso presence of the gang is very small, said Moton, whose unit already deals with 456 active gangs, tagging crews and other groups.
El Paso introduction
El Paso police had their first confirmed encounter with the Mara Salvatrucha on Aug. 15, when officers responding to an assault call in a Downtown parking lot discovered a tattooed member of the gang armed with a machete.
At 12:45 a.m. Aug. 15, police were checking the area after two men were assaulted when officers found a suspicious man in a parking lot in the 800 block of East San Antonio, gang detectives said.
"He went for the machete. But before he could grab the machete, the officers took him down," Moton said.
The man arrested was a 21-year-old native of Honduras with gang tattoos and admitted membership, said gang investigators, who keep a database of activity to track gangs.
The man, who had an El Paso residence, was charged with assault, resisting arrest and assaulting a public servant.
About the gang
Machetes are traditionally a tool used to cut a swath through jungle underbrush in the Americas, but they have emerged as a common weapon of the Mara Salvatrucha.
In May, Mara members armed with machetes cut four fingers off a rival gang member in northern Virginia, which has seen a wave of violence linked to the gang, the Washington Post reported.
The Washington area has the nation's second-largest concentration of Salvadorans, after Los Angeles where the Mara Salvatrucha was created in the 1980s by refugees excluded or seeking protection from established street gangs.
"Mara" refers to a group, "Salva" to El Salvador and "trucha" is Spanish slang for "watch out." The gang is also known as MS-13. The 13 is a gang reference to the South or Southern California.
The gang, which is involved in drug dealing, extortion and other crimes, spread to El Salvador and Honduras when members were deported.
Currently, Maras are fighting what has been described as open warfare with authorities in Central America. On Dec. 23, gang members allegedly opened fire on a public bus, killing 28 passengers, and left a message opposing the death penalty -- a main campaign issue in next year's presidential race in Honduras.
The gang spreads
Crackdowns by commando-style police and military units in their native countries pushed gang members, who range in age from 11 to 40, into the Mexican states of Chiapas, Veracruz and Oaxaca.
Earlier this month, Mexico's top organized crime prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said gang members, known as mareros, were being hired as low-level gunmen for the Juárez-based Carrillo Fuentes cartel. Several men with the Mara Salvatrucha's distinctive tattoos were killed in recent months in Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo in apparent drug-related killings, the Associated Press reported.
"The drug traffickers hire them as killers, but without making them formally part of their organizations," Santiago Vasconcelos told the Associated Press. "It's a way of using their violent behavior in favor of drug trafficking."
Juárez police have said there is no organized Mara Salvatrucha "clique" despite the occasional member in the city, the FBI said.
"The established gangs, and there are quite a bit in Juárez, have said in interviews they would not allow any kind of entry" of outside gangs, FBI spokesman Art Werge said, adding that Mara members in the region are likely trying to make their way to major U.S. cities.
'On the lookout'
Immigration agents in El Paso have detained Mara members in the past but numbers were not immediately available, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said. Captured migrants undergo a criminal background check and gang members are segregated in detention centers.
Agents "are certainly on the lookout for them. They want to make sure they identify them early on," she said.
The arrest of a Mara crossing illegally into Brownsville in December marked the fourth or fifth capture of one of the gang's members in the area in recent years, the U.S. Border Patrol told the Brownsville Herald.
Terrorism connections?
U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas, whose district covers the lower Rio Grande Valley, said there was an added concern about the gang's presence along the border.
"We know from El Salvadoran law enforcement that al-Qaida is meeting with violent gang leaders in El Salvador," Ortiz said in a Sept. 2 news release.
But El Salvador's Vice Minister of Citizen Security Rodrigo Avila said there was no known link between the street gang and the terrorist group.
"My respect (goes) to him (Ortiz), but I don't know where he got that," Avila told El Salvador's El Diario de Hoy.
The FBI's Werge agreed. "The connection between Mara Salvatrucha and al-Qaida is greatly exaggerated," he said.
Whether linked to Middle Eastern terrorism or not, the gang plague is considered a national security threat by authorities in Honduras and El Salvador and a potential threat to Mexico.
"They are in an area where they don't have much of a future and, unfortunately, they've gone into a gang mode," Werge said.
"Snare," 19, posed for a photo at a center for minors in El Salvador.
Gang history
The notorious Mara Salvatrucha is reportedly linked to the Juárez cartel and has had its first confirmed encounter with El Paso police.
Mara Salvatrucha is created in the 1980s in Los Angeles by refugees from El Salvador.
The gang spreads to Central America when gang members are deported.
Gang members cross into Mexico after police crackdowns in recent years.
Violence associated with the gang makes headlines in northern Virginia last year.
Gang members are arrested along the Texas-Mexico border, including in El Paso.
El Paso gangs
Number of active gangs, tagging crews, and related groups: 456.
Gang members: 3,946.
Juveniles: 308.
Males: 3,440.
Females: 198.
Cases received by gang unit in 2004 as of November: 1,188.
Source: El Paso police gang unit.
SALVADORAN REFUGEES doing jobs AMERICANS won't do, and contributing to AMERICAN society as well.
If the voters in other states are content to allow their elected officials to ignore their violent crime by calling it an immigration problem, that is certainly their right.
The Texas Rangers were created to combat Mexican crime gangs on the border, and still do.
ping
Welcome to third world America - gang members toting machetes...sickening.
Ping
REAL bad.
At least we used to just look forward to getting shot! Now we look forward to being hacked to death!
"The El Paso presence of the gang is very small, said Moton, whose unit already deals with 456 active gangs, tagging crews and other groups. "
Is that unbelievable or what! 456 active gangs in El Paso???? No wonder our law enforcement is so stretched.
The Immigrant Gang Plague (A Must Read)
City Journal (Published by the Manhattan Institute) ^ | Summer 2004 | Heather MacDonald
Posted on 08/06/2004 11:04:22 AM PDT by holyscroller
Before immigration optimists issue another rosy prognosis for Americas multicultural future, they might visit Belmont High School in Los Angeless overwhelmingly Hispanic, gang-ridden Rampart district. Upward and onward is not a phrase that comes to mind when speaking to the first- and second-generation immigrant teens milling around the school this January.
---snip----
Debate has recently heated up over whether Mexican immigrationunique in its scale and in other important wayswill defeat the American tradition of assimilation. The rise of underclass behavior among the progeny of Mexicans and other Central Americans must be part of that debate. There may be assimilation going on, but a significant portion of it is assimilation downward to the worst elements of American life. To be sure, most Hispanics are hardworking, law-abiding residents; they have reclaimed squalid neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. Among the dozens of Hispanic youths I interviewed, several expressed gratitude for the United States, a sentiment that would be hard to find among the ordinary run of teenagers. But given the magnitude of present immigration levels, if only a portion of those from south of the border goes bad, the costs to society will be enormous.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1186429/posts
Just doing the jobs that Americans don't want to do!
Death To all Islamofascist terrorists ~ Bump!
BTT
This is not new. It just hasn't been reported. They are also in California and different colleges/cities around the US, Oh..and then there is the Mexican Islamic gangs that start in Prisons. They also support the return of states they feel we stole from them and blame Jews for most of the world's problems. This becoming Islamic just makes them more dangerous. The physical similiarites between Mexicans and Middle Easterners makes it easy for Mexican Islamics to aid and comfort(and bring to the US) terrorists from the Middle East. This is a group I would suspect if/when we start having suicide bombers here. HA! And we thought most Mexicans were Catholic.
? converting to Islam in great numbers. 13 mosques and Islam schools in Mexico and many hispanic Islam mosques here.
The gangs are all over. In small Canyon county, Idaho, they are battling drive by shootings. One county commissioner (an American hispanic by the way) is fighting them with all he can.
Here is a republican president's view of it all:
The following Teddy Roosevelt quotes can be found in Edmund Morris, The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt Modern Library 2001)
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism...The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin...would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."
(Speech, New York, 1915)
http://www.presidentlincoln.com/Quote4.html
How does that (?) happen??
should read: Many Mexicans are converting to Islam.
pinging you--What's your take, observations? I used to live in EP lo these many years.
I'm not sure that Mara Salvatrucha would become a big problem here --- for one they have to contend with the Mexican gangs --- and with these people it's all about turf --- the Mexican gangs here don't like any outsiders and would likely attack them before much time went by. The drug smuggling cartels of course will use them --- and that would be danger for the border patrol agents --- not the general population here but likely they could gain a foot hold in Ciudad Juarez which is quite lawless in many places and thats where the drug headquarters are. The local police and border patrol do a pretty good job at keeping the undesireables out of the immediate area -- and besides if you're a violent criminal living in El Paso, you're going to go over to Juarez to commit your most vile crimes because they won't try too hard to stop you.
The other thing --- the Mexican army is out there patrolling the border and they do go after Central Americans --- who try to trick them with fraudulent birth certificates from Chiapas. No one really seems to know what they're doing --- expect possibly protecting certain drug cartels' smugglers --- from other's who might try to intervene or rob them. But if they find a Guatemalan or Honduran out there, they take them in.
I can't imagine many Mexicans really becoming Islamic. No beer??? No pork??? That means no more chicharrones, no more tamales. No fun. But then I guess it didn't stop many blacks from joining up.
Maybe they would start their own version of Islam, they get to keep tacos, tequila, etc. but fully agree with taking over the US.
I understand those suicide bombers are all kinds of drugged
on their mission to blow up.
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