The alleged leader of the MS-13 gang on the US east coast has been arrested in Virginia, Pam Bondi announced on Thursday.
The US attorney general lauded the early morning arrest of the 24-year-old man from El Salvador, who was described as one of MS-13’s top three leaders in the United States, as a major victory in the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on a gang known for brutal violence and extortion.
The justice department did not immediately release his name or detail the charges against him. Bondi said he was living in the US illegally, in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington DC. It was unclear whether he was facing federal criminal charges or had been taken into custody by immigration officials.
The administration promoted the arrest as part of its effort to fulfill campaign promises to quash illegal immigration and eliminate gangs. MS-13 gang, or Mara Salvatrucha, was one of eight Latin American criminal organizations declared foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration last month.
“We want to make our streets safer,” Bondi told reporters. “We want to make our schools safer. We want to make your neighborhoods safer. This guy was living in a neighborhood right around you – no longer.”
In the past decade, the US justice department has intensified its focus on MS-13, which originated as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles, but grew into a transnational gang based in El Salvador. It has members in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico and thousands of members across the US with numerous branches or “cliques.”
The 2016 killings of two high school girls, who were hacked and beaten to death as they walked through their neighborhood on New York’s Long Island, focused national attention on the gang. Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, friends and classmates at Brentwood high school, were killed with a machete and a baseball bat by a group of young men and teenage boys who had stalked them from a car. More killings followed in the months that followed.
