"Oh yeah, they're here."
Call this Mara Salvatrucha's 15 minutes of infamy. Since reports emerged late last year of its alleged link with al-Qaeda terrorists, the Central American gang has been on the hot seat. On March 14, federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials arrested 103 gang members in a nationwide sweep, nabbing thugs in seven cities, including in Los Angeles, the gang's initial base of operations in the 1980s and launch pad for its subsequent spread. Local authorities say the gang, also known as MS-13, set up shop here in the early '90s, first in apartments near Pennwood and Arville (by Clark High School), then sprouting Valley-wide.
Metro's Gang Crimes Det. Tony Morales stops just short of saying the alleged al-Qaeda links are much ado about nothing. MS-13 is no more worrisome, he says, than the other 200-plus violent gangs here.
"We've got to treat them as such. We can't treat them special, or it will go to their head," says Morales, who estimates local membership at 100 or so. In the '90s, he says, MS-13 members frequented the area behind Jerry's Nugget on Fifth Street, Pennwood and Arville, Maryland Parkway and Tropicana and Meadows Village near Naked City.
"They haven't been particularly active here," he says. "We've paid no particular attention to them. I've read articles about the hype on MS-13 and its alleged al-Qaeda link, but so far it's just hype."
While the FBI has neither publicly confirmed nor denied any connection between MS-13 and al-Qaeda, news reports depict at least a tangential connection. Quoting U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement officials, the Washington Times reported in November that Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda cell leader with a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, met with MS-13 leaders in July in Honduras. The Washington Times report alleges that El Shukrijumah had hoped to tap MS-13's expertise in smuggling aliens through Mexico into the United States.
A month later, the Associated Press reported that an MS-13 gang member and a Muslim from Bangladesh were arrested crossing the Rio Grande together, prompting Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, co-chair of the House border caucus, to say meetings between the two groups have occurred and MS-13 may be helping al-Qaeda smuggle Islamic fundamentalists into America. Since 9/11, news organizations from Time to the Christian Science Monitor have noted that gangs and prisons are potential recruiting pools for terrorists. Newsweek's March 28 issue carried a large feature on MS-13.
The alleged MS-13/al-Qaeda union has dredged up stories of similar partnerships between gangs and terrorist groups. In the late- '80s, Jeff Fort, a leader of Chicago's El Rukn gang, offered to commit terrorist acts on behalf of the Libyan government for $2.5 million; one gangster even bought a handheld rocket launcher from undercover federal agents. Fort and others were convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. Then there's the story of Aqil, a San Diego juvenile who converted to Islam in a California boot camp and ended up in an Afghanistan training camp with one of the men accused of killing American journalist Daniel Pearl.
The news reports say terrorists would like to tap Mara Salvatrucha's alien-smuggling prowess. The gang was initially comprised of refugees who fled El Salvador's civil war in the '80s. Those with ties to the notorious El Salvadoran gang, La Mara, linked with ex-members of the paramilitary Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL)—comprised largely of peasants trained as guerilla fighters—to protect themselves from LA's brooding Hispanic gangs. MS-13 quickly developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent.
Morales says the March 14 arrests have as much to do with MS-13 potentially partnering with terrorists as with the gang's ever-growing résumé of crimes: smuggling drugs, weapons and illegal aliens, as well as committing rapes, aggravated assaults, carjackings, extortion, robberies and numerous murders. According to federal authorities, MS-13 are in Alaska, California, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington, D.C.—more than 3,000 are thought to live in the D.C.-Virginia area.
They're also in Nevada prisons. The website to the Nevada Corrections Association (www.nevadacorrections.org) has photos of incarcerated MS-13 members flashing gang signs (pinkie and forefingers outstretched, giving the appearance of ram's horns) and sporting tattoos, a large "M" and "S," the 1 atop the 3. A corrections officer at the county's juvenile detention center says several younger MS-13 members have been incarcerated at one time or another.
"The bad thing about them is that most of the older ones are trained in guerilla warfare," says the corrections officer—adept at using booby traps, explosives and firearms.
The federal arrests netted 103 members—30 in New York, 25 in Washington state, 17 in Los Angeles, 10 each in Newark, New Jersey, Miami and Baltimore and one in Irving, Texas. There were no arrests here, Morales says, thus no need for undue worry.
Other than several Dumpsters inside Pine Village apartments tagged with FMNL—whose members helped form MS-13—there are no overt signs that the area near Clark High is MS-13 territory. There is a smattering of California license plates. In the space between apartments, young kids in street clothes and bright-green uniforms play soccer, often hitting windows. The alley between the first set of ragtag buildings is strewn with broken beer bottle glass. Every fifth apartment or so, young, Hispanic-looking men with bald heads drink beer or smoke cigarettes. As I drive down the alley headed to Arville, a dozen men glare at me, one guy throwing his hands up as if to say, You got a problem? Morales insists that, at least in Las Vegas, MS-13's bark is worse than its bite.
"Most of them come to Vegas to hide from crimes they committed elsewhere or to get away from the gang," he says. "If anyone is going to be greatly affected by it [the terrorist link], it will probably be the border states like Arizona, California and Texas."