I am not defending organized crime, but, President Trump wants to chase MS13 to end the illicit drug trade in the USA. MS13 is not the way to do that.
MS13 is not responsible for illegal immigration. The label MS13 is a network that will allow members to travel throughout it's member gangs. Why do they do that? To avoid the law. Let's say a member is wanted for extortion in Los Angeles and believes he will get caught and go to prison; why not leave the city and/or the country where he is not known and can protect from arrest.
Graph (click here)
Approximately 16 percent to 19 percent of those incarcerated in the USA are Latinos. They have three times the problem in obtaining legitimate jobs in the USA before and after they are incarcerated.
The Latino population incarcerated in the USA have to face racism, a language barrier and if they are illegals they have a limited access to work.
Let me say this up front; if any person, American or not, has a criminal record, innocent or guilty; they have a terrible time obtaining work, especially cookie cutter jobs of Wall Street. The thing with innocent people wrongly arrested and charged, is that the arrest and the charges are still on their background check. Honest. Innocent people if arrested and charged have permanent marks on their background checks. In most Wall Street cookie cutter restaurants and the like see crime on the background check; they run in the other direction. The corporate structure identifies these innocent people as high risk anyway.
So, let's take that reality one more step. When an inmate serves his or her time, also known as "debt to society," they face not just an uphill battle to find a legitimate job, but, more or less a mountain climb. That is their reality. Now, place in that SPACE a Hispanic man without a clue as to how to expunge his record or obtain work or housing and where do they turn? MS13.
Turning away from crime for many men and women in the USA is not easy. Honest. MS13 is a support group to these people. MS 13 is no different than any other gang in the USA, there is some kind of social structure that maintains it's focus. These gangs, including MS 13 are deadly. That cannot be understated, but, if the gang serves as a place where a man or woman can be protected while carrying out crime to have money in their pockets, it is then home. It is well known these gangs are just as much a presence in a prison stay as any criminal activity in the community. By the way, guns support these people as well.
So, while Mr. Trump and AG Sessions wants to end gang related violence, MS 13 is not unique. These gang members do not really have the same longevity as average Americans. Their lifestyles are exceptionally high risk and do not reflect any normal mortalities of the majority of Americans. Realizing that, the members are within the gang because they do not have alternatives.
MS13 is most commonly Hispanic because of the language and cultural barriers of it's members. MS13 is a SYMPTOM of a failed society and not a desired lifestyle. To say, MS13 is a cartel of immigrants in the USA is incorrect. It is a street gang and nothing else. There is no limiting importation of illicit drugs by focusing on MS13. The reality is that while USA law enforcement chase MS13, the drug cartels will have an open lane for their drug trafficking. Basically, focusing on MS13 will be nothing more than police chasing their tails if the purpose is to stop drug and human trafficking.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions are grossly wrong on this issue and will cause less focus on drug traffickers and American deaths will increase.
March 20, 2018
By Steven Dudley
...I spent three years (click here) at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies chronicling the MS13’s criminal exploits for the National Institute of Justice. Our study proves that MS13 is neither a drug cartel nor was it born of illegal immigration.
That misconception is fueling failed US policies that, in my assessment, will do little to deter the MS13....
...The MS13 was born in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, when scores of Salvadorans, many of them fleeing the country’s civil war, arrived to California. Like other Latino immigrant groups, the new arrivals formed a youth gang of the sort proliferating in Los Angeles at the time.
Then as now, the MS13 acted as a surrogate family for its members, though not a benign one. The MS13 created a collective identity that was constructed and reinforced by shared experiences, particularly expressions of violence and social control.
It has since spread to at least a half-dozen countries on two continents and has become a prime source of destabilizing violence, particularly extortion, in Central American countries like El Salvador and Honduras....
...In the early 2000s, one MS13 boss named Nelson Comandari tried to use the gang’s national criminal infrastructure to establish a drug distribution network. Comandari was well positioned to do it. He was powerful in Los Angeles, had underworld family connections from El Salvador to Colombia and enjoyed strong ties to the feared Mexican Mafia, a US-based prison gang with connections to Mexican cartels.
Yet within a few years Comandari was frustrated. MS13 members turned out to be inept at drug smuggling and resistant to the whole idea. Our research found that the gang frowns upon those who put their personal business above the collective’s....
...One reason the MS13 has failed so roundly at becoming a drug cartel is that it is more of a social club than a lucrative criminal enterprise. Its members benefit from the camaraderie and support that comes with membership — not the heaping monetary rewards that never arrive.
Entrepreneurs who hope to leverage its network for their personal financial gain see the same strong resistance that scuttled Comandari’s plans.
Perhaps more critically, the MS13 is a decentralized organization with no clear hierarchy. The gang is broken into local cells called “cliques” — or “clicas” in Spanish — that are more loyal to each other than to the various leadership councils that operate around Central America and the United States....
