Tag: Mara Salvatrucha 13

Zetas and MS-13 Join Forces in Guatemala

On By mexicoinstituteIn Security and the Rule of Law, U.S.-Mexico BorderLeave a comment

Fox News Latino, 4/7/12

Shipped back to the Central American countries of their birth from the streets and prisons of southern California in the 1990s, the tattooed and scarred members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang quickly grew into a powerful and deadly force throughout the region.

Now, Guatemalan authorities say, they have begun to see new and disturbing evidence of an alliance between the Maras and another of the most feared criminal organizations in Latin America — a deal with the potential to further undermine that U.S.-backed effort to fight violent crime and narcotics trafficking in the region.

Secret jailhouse recordings and a turncoat kidnapper have described a pact between leaders of the Maras and the Zetas, the brutal Mexican paramilitary drug cartel that has seized control of large parts of rural northern Guatemala in its campaign for mastery of drug-trafficking routes from South America to the United States.

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Gang Activity Now a Focus for Immigration Agents

On By mexicoinstituteIn Migration and Migrants, Security and the Rule of LawLeave a comment

The New York Times, 12/9/2010

When Walter Alberto Torres, a Salvadoran immigrant and a gang member, confessed in October 2009 that he had unsuccessfully plotted the assassination of an immigration agent in New York City, the admission touched off more than just his prosecution.

In the weeks that followed, immigration authorities, working with other law enforcement agencies, conducted raids on suspected hide-outs of Mr. Torres’s gang, La Mara Salvatrucha 13, an international network of violent cliques with a growing presence in New York City and its suburbs.

And that offensive — intended in part, officials said, to signal that the government would not tolerate attacks on its officers — was only the beginning for the New York office ofImmigration and Customs Enforcement. In the months since, agents in the office’s investigative division have expanded their dragnet far beyond La Mara Salvatrucha and across the region, from Ulster County in the Hudson Valley to eastern Long Island.

From October 2009 through September, they arrested 285 suspects they said were gang members or close associates — a record for the office and a fivefold increase over the same period the previous year.

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