Thanks to the DOJ, over 700 hard core MS-13 gangsters are safely behind bars. Attorney General William Barr teamed up with his Central American counterparts to announce the results of a major anti-drug, organized crime crackdown.
DOJ press statement released
The Department of Justice put out a press statement detailing the DOJ assistance to clean up a global organized crime syndicate which has tentacles across North and South America and affect life here in the United States.
Senior law enforcement officials from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been real busy with our help to crack down hard on gangs like MS-13 and 18th Street.
The number one reason that folks from Central America have been claiming asylum here in the United States, expecting to get it legally or illegally based on Barack Obama’s promises, is because life in their home countries is so darn dangerous.
The DOJ decided that along with deporting everyone back where they belong, we should do our part to help stop the violence. In 2017, the justice department put the wheels in motion. They just rolled over MS-13 like a bulldozer.
More than 700 members of transnational criminal organizations are in detention. Most are members of MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. All were rounded up in the course of the past week under the DOJ sponsored Operational Regional Shield.
The program hooks gang prosecutors and investigators from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the United States together so they can compare notes and plan joint operations.
Coordinated investigations
The coordinated multi-country investigations are finally paying off with simultaneous mass operations across Latin America to drag the violent criminals off the streets.
In Honduras, they dragged in a police commissioner along with a police deputy inspector, and three law enforcement agents. The DOJ says they were all involved in human smuggling between Central America and the states.
All of those arrested have been charged with human smuggling, money laundering and illegal association to commit a crime.
Attorney General Barr noted that the DOJ is “committed to continued collaboration in locating and arresting gang members and associates engaged in transnational crimes. Our countries are made safer by working together to protect national security and to ensure public safety in our neighborhoods.”
El Salvador was where most of the action happened this week. After their prosecutors filed charges against “1,152 members of organized crime groups in the country, primarily MS-13 and 18th Street Gangs,” the crackdown began.
Within hours, the DOJ relates, “the National Civil Police had captured 572 of the defendants for charges involving terrorism, murder, extortion, kidnapping, vehicle theft, robbery, conspiracy, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, weapons violations, human trafficking and human smuggling.” The agencies keep all the cash, guns, and equipment for themselves.
