There is proof of MS-13″ American group” action in and around Washington, D.C., despite what reported group associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyer is arguing in court.
Abrego Garcia, a Peruvian regional who lived improperly close to the world’s capital, is accused of belonging to the MS-13 elite in southwestern Maryland. His recent immigration attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, disputes that he was always a part of MS-13 and has backed that claim in court papers by claiming that Abrego Garcia has previously lived there and that the Western group has no place there.
The political contentious courtroom battle over Abrego Garcia’s incarceration in a Peruvian jail has become a focal point of the evidence linking him to MS-13. Republicans have emphasized the various forms of evidence presented to authorities by the Department of Homeland Security and the fact that an immigration judge and an appeals panel determined that the information in 2019 was reliable despite Democrats ‘ claims that small links the violent gang’s father of three Abrego Garcia, a father of three, and the father of three.
In the DC region, MS-13 predominated, prevailing dominance.
Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is a violent, transnational street gang made up of loosely connected” cliques” spread throughout the United States. Each clique, such as the Western cell, has complete control over a particular area or “turf.” In Maryland’s Montgomery County, another District of Columbia suburb, reportedly identified 13 different cliques in 2004.
According to a Journal of Gang Research profile on MS-13’s origins, the criminal organization was founded among Central American refugees fleeing from civil conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s. Salvadoran youth banded together to fight the Mexican Mafia’s existing Hispanic gangs there at the time. Then they referred to themselves as” Salvatrucha,” or street-tough Salvadorans.
In the end, MS-13 expanded to a number of states in the United States, according to a Department of Justice fact sheet. Some members settled in neighborhoods around D.C., where they established a large, lasting presence around the nation’s capital. The Washington Metroplex had a population of roughly 250, 000 illegal Salvadorans in 1995, making the area’s D.C. area the second-largest Salvadoran population outside of El Salvador. Today, MS-13 continues to seek out immigrants from the country plagued by gang violence.
aggressive defense tactics
In a federal complaint filed against the Trump administration late last month, Sandoval-Moshenberg claimed that the Western branch of MS-13 only operates out of Brentwood, a Long Island hamlet in New York, a state that Abrego Garcia “has never lived in.”
According to Sandoval-Moshenberg, the DOJ and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office referenced the Brentwood Locos Salvatruchas clique’s 2011 execution-style murder of Ricardo Ceron, a member of the Western clique, in Long Island.
The U.S. attorney’s office published two press releases to promote the criminal proceedings at the time, and Ceron’s killers were charged with federal murder. The DOJ’s assertion that the Western clique’s activities are limited to New York is not implied by the releases. According to a press release from the Suffolk County Police Department, they simply state that a Western clique member was once murdered in Brentwood, his hometown.
According to court records analysis conducted by D.C. attorney Will Chamberlain, who is senior counsel at the conservative Article III Project, one extensive racketeer-involved and corrupt organizations act indictment of MS-13 members from 2011 makes reference to the Western clique.
The sprawling 42-page federal indictment, which the Washington Examiner thoroughly examined, mentions that the Western clique was one of six major MS-13 organizations operating in the D.C. metropolitan area.
According to the indictment,” MS-13 was organized in ‘ cliques,’ that is, smaller groups operating in a particular city or region,” according to the indictment. These cliques included Sailors ( SLSW), Normandy ( NLS), Peajes, Western ( WLS), Uniones ( ULS), and , Fultons.
A 2015 article by InSight Crime, an organization that investigates organized crime, was published in reference to a Maryland-based” Western Locos” clique. InSight Crime mentioned a conference call among “representatives from the Uniones, Normandie, and Western Locos cliques in Maryland” that took place sometime in November 2009,” to refocus attention on the Maryland and Washington region.” In the same D. C. court RICO case, InSight Crime reported on the same D. C. court RICO case. According to InSight Crime, these three MS-13 cells” consolidated in Washington,” which was consistent with the FBI’s findings.
The 2019 police report on Abrego Garcia’s gang affiliation also mentions a task force that was set up specifically to gather information on MS-13 for further evidence of its foothold in the D.C. area. According to Bill Shipley, a former federal prosecutor who had dealt with gangs in California, the existence of this Gang Unit MS-13 Intelligence Squad within the , Prince George’s County police force likely points to an alarming amount of MS-13 activity in the area at the time.
Shipley wrote,” The fact that Prince Georges County has an MS-13 Gang Unit is highly suggestive of the fact that Prince Georges County has an MS-13 gang problem.” Shipley argued that the area’s high level of MS-13 activity necessitated” an entire Gang Unit with its own Intelligence Squad dedicated to identifying and investigating MS-13 members.”
The MS-13 intelligence unit is still in use, but it’s not clear if it exists. A question regarding the squad’s status was not answered by PGPD.
According to a PGPD crime statistics report every year, a general gang unit was active in 2022. According to PGPD, there were 28 gang-related felony arrests, 42 misdemeanor arrests, nine gang identification, and 19 dismantled during that year. The crimes ranged from homicide to possession of firearms.
A Gang Task Force Tip Line is currently present at PGPD.
Abrego Garcia’s claims of MS-13 membership
According to a gang field interview sheet, which was used to gather information on suspected gang affiliates,” a past proven and reliable” informant informed Prince George’s County Police Department officers that Abrego Garcia was” an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique” in 2019. According to the confidential source, he had the moniker” Chele” and the rank of” Chequeo.” The Bureau of Immigration Appeals ultimately upheld the finding in Abrego Garcia’s deportation proceedings after a judge later determined the MS-13 membership claim to be” trustworthy.”
This gang registry record was created in response to Abrego Garcia’s arrest, along with two other known MS-13 members with their own ranks and nicknames, while he was loitering at a Home Depot parking lot in Hyattsville, allegedly looking for labor work.
DHS RECELETES EVIDENCE REFECTING ABREGO GARCIA’S MS-13 TIES
According to the police report, Abrego Garcia was covered with the eyes, ears, and mouths of the U.S. presidents while wearing a hoodie that purportedly featured symbols that denoted gang affiliation: rolls of cash. This was interpreted by authorities as saying” see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” an MS-13 motto that proclaimed allegiance to a code of silence.
Additionally, Abrego Garcia wore a Chicago Bulls hat. Wearing this indicated that one is a member of the MS-13, according to the police statements. According to a Washington Post article on the gang’s Satanic history, some of the group’s founders were Satan worshippers and claimed they committed crimes at the behest of” The Beast.” They have since adopted devil horns as a hand sign. The Chicago Bulls logo with the horns” as a] stand-in of sorts for the MS-13’s devil horns symbol,” reported journalist Steven Dudley, who has spent a decade studying MS-13 for the investigative non-profit InSight Crime, to the BBC.
