Members of the violent MS-13 gang, as well as members of other gangs, are using the migrant caravans to slip into the U.S.
U.S. Border Patrol Agent Chief Matthew Hudak tweeted Friday that officials had captured five gang members the previous week in Laredo, Texas.
“5 gang members in 7 days! #Laredo Sector #USBP agents arrested a total of 5 gang members in the last week, including an #ms13 & two 18th Street gang members. They attempt to evade arrest by exploiting the influx of migrants attempting to enter our country,” Hudak tweeted.
The MS-13 and 18th Street gangs are both violent gangs originating from Central America. They have also entered the U.S., committing murders in multiple East Coast states, most prominently New York. Two years ago, Suffolk County, New York, authorities said they had pretty much eliminated the gang from the area.
The Daily Wire has reported previously on the violence caused by the gangs in the U.S. In January 2020, a member of the MS-13 gang who had been deported five times previously was apprehended once again. The gang member had a history of drug offenses, grand theft auto, theft, and burglary.
One of the most prominent stories involving the gang involved attacking a man and his friends with a machete. As The Daily Wire reported:
Manuel Amaya-Alvarez, a 22-year-old El Salvadorian national who was in the U.S. illegally, was sentenced to 20 years on November 14, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ). Amaya-Alvarez was one of several MS-13 gang members involved in the attack, which resulted in serious physical injuries to two men and the death of a female.
Amaya-Alvarez admitted in September 2017 that he and his fellow gang members planned to “take out” four individuals at the Running Bear Park just outside of Dallas, in Irving, Texas. Members of the gang lured a man they believed was part of a rival gang to the park, claiming they wanted to purchase his tattoo machine. When the man arrived at the park with two other men and a woman, Amaya-Alvarez and another gang member greeted the group.
The group of four was taken into a wooded area, where other gang members armed with a shotgun as well as machetes and clubs revealed themselves. The four victims were surrounded and forced to their knees. The MS-13 gang members robbed the four individuals and then began attacking them.
The three men were able to escape, but two of them suffered blunt force trauma and cuts from the gang’s weapons. The woman, according to the DOJ, “was savagely maimed and left for dead.”
In Seattle in October 2019, a gang member admitted to killing his teenage friend with a baseball bat and then working with another gang member to chop the body into pieces using a machete. Seattle, a sanctuary city, continues to refuse to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The New York Post reported that Border Patrol agents in California last month arrested “a documented MS-13 gang member” who had been traveling with Salvadoran migrants to the U.S. Border.