Street gangsMS-13 is a street gang, not a drug cartel – and the difference matters

By Steven S. Dudley

In October 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that pursuing the Mara Salvatrucha, a Salvadoran gang also known as MS-13, was “a priority for our Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces.”

“Drugs are killing more Americans than ever before, in large part thanks to powerful cartels and international gangs and deadly new synthetic opioids like fentanyl,” Sessions told the International Association of Chiefs of Police on 23 October. He concluded that “perhaps the most brutal of these gangs is MS-13.”

President Donald Trump also cites MS-13 to justify his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration from Latin America. In his 2018 State of the Union address, Trump threatened to “destroy” the group, which is responsible for a spate of brutal, high-profile murders in Boston, Long Island, Virginia and beyond.

There’s a problem here – and it’s not just MS-13’s violent ethos. It’s that the Trump administration is getting this gang all wrong.

I spent three years at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies chronicling the MS-13’s criminal exploits for the National Institute of Justice. Our study proves that MS-13 is neither a drug cartel nor was it born of illegal immigration.

That misconception is fueling failed U.S. policies that, in my assessment, will do little to deter MS-13.

MS-13 is no Yakuza
The Trump administration is not the first administration to mischaracterize MS-13, which conducts vicious but rudimentary criminal activities like extortion, armed robbery and murder across Central America, Mexico and the U.S.

In 2012, the Obama-era Treasury Department put the group on a organized crime “kingpin” list with the Italian mafia Camorra, the Mexican criminal group the Zetas and the Japanese mob known as the Yakuza.

That designation gave the group a rarefied status in the underworld, which must have pleased its leadership.