DOJ prosecuting MS-13 gang members on murder, terrorism, racketeering charges

U.S. attorneys are prosecuting violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua members, including on terrorism charges, after the Trump administration designated both as foreign terrorist organizations earlier this year.

Both the designation and terrorism convictions are firsts this year.

More than 260 TdA members were federally indicted this year. This month, multiple indictments were unsealed, including charging terrorism against more than 70 TdA members in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York and Texas, The Center Square reported.

U.S. attorneys also secured major wins against MS-13 leaders nationwide after the FTO expanded operations since its founding in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Its members, primarily men from El Salvador and Honduras in the country illegally, engage in “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally.” They present “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” President Donald Trump said in a June MS-13 FTO order.

MS-13 is most active in California, Maryland, New York, Texas and Virginia, the DOJ says. “To protect MS-13’s power, reputation, and territory, members and associates must use intimidation and violence, including murder and assault with deadly weapons, such as machetes,” the DOJ says. They also rival U.S. gangs and are “required to commit acts of violence to increase their status and rank. One of the principal rules of MS-13 is that its members must attack and kill rivals, known as ‘chavalas,’ whenever possible,” the DOJ says.

In Maryland, six MS-13 members were convicted of racketeering and murder this month; three were sentenced to life in prison. They were convicted of luring a 16-year-old girl to an area near Loch Raven Reservoir in Cockeysville, where they “struck her with a machete and stabbed her multiple times, murdering her,” the DOJ said.

They also lured a female suspected rival gang member cooperating with law enforcement to an area near the CSX Bayview Train Yard in Baltimore, where they stabbed her 143 times, killing her and leaving her body near the train tracks. They also attacked her sister at the train tracks, stabbing her 70 times, and stabbed men several times, who survived. They reported the murders and attacks to MS-13 leadership, the DOJ said.

They “committed brutal violence – including murdering and stabbing young women and girls – to fuel their respective climbs up the MS-13 organization. These acts, often carried out with machetes, spread fear and terror throughout the community,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti, who leads the DOJ’s Criminal Division, said.

In Los Angeles, five MS-13 members were found guilty of murdering six people, either by stabbing them to death with machetes, beating them with baseball bats or shooting them. They also threw their bodies off cliffs in and near the Angels National Forest, The Center Square reported.

In Houston, eight MS-13 members pleaded guilty to a multi-year racketeering conspiracy, multiple murders and witness tampering. As part of their plea agreements, they admitted to being MS-13 members and taking orders from MS-13 leadership to commit “multiple murders, extortion, drug trafficking, robbery, and obstruction of justice” in and around the Houston area from 2017 through 2018, the DOJ said. They were sentenced to between 35 and 50 years in prison.

They used machetes, baseball bats and strangulation to kill their victims, mutilated or dismembered the bodies and took pictures that were sent to high-ranking MS-13 leaders in El Salvador, the DOJ said. The victims were believed to be rival gang members, cooperating with law enforcement, or “working against MS-13’s interests,” the DOJ said.

In New York, Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales, a Salvadoran national and founding member of MS-13’s Ranfla en las Calles leadership structure, was arraigned this fall on terrorism and racketeering charges.

He was a fugitive for three years, on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List, wanted for overseeing the “Western Zone” of MS-13 in El Salvador, the DOJ said. Mexican officials arrested him in March and turned him over to officials at a California port of entry, where he was extradited to New York.

He was previously indicted by a grand jury in New York along with 14 other MS-13 leaders for “a litany of violent terrorist activities,” authorities said. They include using Improvised Explosive Devices and grenades, using violence to control territories, manipulating the electoral process in El Salvador, operating military-style training camps for firearms and explosives, among other acts. In the U.S., they engaged in “extreme violence, including countless murders, attempted murders, assaults, and related offenses,” the DOJ said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has prosecuted hundreds of MS-13 leaders, members and associates for committing more than 80 murders since 2009.

In Nebraska, an alleged member of an MS-13 assassination squad in Honduras is being prosecuted. He was wanted by Honduran authorities for a quadruple homicide after he escaped from prison and illegally entered the U.S. through the southwest border during the Biden administration. A multiagency investigation led to his arrest in Grand Island, Nebraska, this month, The Center Square reported.