The U.S. Department of Justice announced the formal indictment of 14 high-ranking leaders of the MS-13 gang organization.
According to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on the 14th, the 14 indicted MS-13 gang members, all over the age of 40, were senior leaders of the gang organization and had led criminal activities over the past nearly 20 years. These individuals currently face a series of terrorism-related charges.
Originally founded by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing war, the MS-13 gang’s motto: “kill, rape, control” and its use of brutality against victims to terrorize and enforce compliance has been recognized as a threat to community safety in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in Central and South America, and has committed violent attacks and murders in the United States and several countries in Latin America.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2017 to combat transnational criminal organizations such as MS-13, and the Department of Justice established the Joint Task Force Vulcan (JTFV) in 2019 to focus on the MS-13 gang.
President Trump and then-Attorney General William Barr announced last July that authorities had made significant progress against the international criminal organization MS-13, prosecuting MS-13 members on terrorism charges for the first time and imposing the death penalty on child killers.
Recent Comments