The gang is not invading the country. They’re not posing as fake families. They’re not growing. To stop them, the government needs to understand them.
There’s one thing everyone can agree with President Donald Trump on
about the street gang MS-13: The group specializes in spectacular
violence. Its members attack in groups, in the woods, at night, luring
teens to their deaths with the promise of girls or weed. One Long Island
boy told me he doesn’t go to parties anymore because he worries any
invitation could be a trap. A victim’s father showed me a death
certificate that said his son’s head had been bashed in, then lowered
his voice and added that the boy’s bones had been marked by machete
slashes, but he didn’t want the mother to know that. A teenager who has
left the gang told me he considers himself dead already, and is just trying to make sure MS-13 doesn’t kill his family.
I’m spending the year reporting on MS-13 members and their associates. I’ve been combing through their text messages.
I’m talking with the detectives building cases against killers not yet
old enough to buy cigarettes. And I’ve been spending long evenings with
the gang’s victims, who often start crying as soon as they start talking
about the violence that has marred their lives. Everyone agrees the
gang is bloodthirsty. Most of the other assertions I’ve heard from the
Trump administration this year about MS-13 have almost no connection to
what I’m seeing on the ground.
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Source: ProPublica
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