Law enforcement has proven President Trump’s point about border security once again.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported yesterday that a grand jury in Queens County, New York, has indicted a dozen members of MS-13, the satanic and murderous Salvadoran street gang. Many of its members, routinely caught at the border, are illegal aliens.
The indictments, handed down Tuesday, include attempted murder and conspiracy and were the result of a long probe into the gang, whose members have made a number of headlines in the last two weeks or so.
Plans for Theft, Murder
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations team and the New York City Police Department’s South Gang Squad ran the long-term investigation, which included wiretaps and video and physical surveillance.
“Top leaders are accused of plotting to kill a rival gang member and planning the execution of a man who left the MS-13 gang,” ICE reported, and “investigators recovered guns and drugs during this takedown.” As well, the thugs discussed plans to burglarize a home of $80,000.
A key defendant, ICE alleged, is “Jorge ‘Terrible’ Andrade, 35, who is named in two of the three indictments handed up by a Queens grand jury.” Ages 20 to 35, the defendants, prosecutors allege, conspired to kill a member of the rival Latin Kings and a former MS-13 thug:
According to charges in the first indictment, Andrade and six others plotted to avenge the shooting and wounding of two reputed members of the MS-13 gang. On June 23, 2018, two men were fired on outside a bar on Sutphin Boulevard. An alleged member of the Latin Kings was apprehended for the shooting. The day after that incident, Andrade and other reputed members of MS-13 were heard on wiretaps planning a hit on the Latin Kings to retaliate. The gang members actually conducted their own surveillance of targets, accessed firearms and discussed locations for the hit, including the Rufus King Park in Jamaica, Queens. In August 2018, Andrade allegedly took photos of the target’s car and revealed his plan to other gang members to beat the rival Latin King member with a baseball bat.
Andrade and the other thugs also plotted to kill a former member who had blacked out his MS-13 tattoo, ICE reported. When wiretaps disclosed the time and place, cops “raced to the scene” in time to stop it. A search turned up cocaine, marijuana, and two guns — a .357 revolver a .32-caliber firearm.
“This was a long-term investigation that not only thwarted a plot to kill an individual — a man trying to remove himself from this vicious street gang — but also resulted in taking would-be killers off our neighborhood streets,” said Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
Cops also arrested the gangbangers who planned to burglarize the home, and two more suspected MS-13 members who, police allege, attacked two others with a metal pipe on September 1.
The ICE report did not disclose the nationality or immigration status of the suspects.
MS-13 In the News
Several recent news reports have again highlighted the vicious brutality of the gang, whose members have spoken of its connection to Satan and murdering on his command. To them, he is known as la bestia, or the beast.
Police in Boston allege that an MS-13 member helped stab a 17-year-old to death. That murder occurred because an immigration judge, appointed by President Barack Hussein Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, freed the illegal-alien gangbanger after hearing a sob story. The judge ignored the pleas of the city’s gang task force.
The murder suspect bragged about “dicing [the victim] as if he were a cow” and twisting the knife blade, such was the savagery of the attack.
A judge in Albemarle County, Virginia recently sentenced an MS-13 murderer for his role in an attack with a machete in which the victim was hacked 144 times. The attack separated the blade from the handle.
Border agents picked up at least four gang members toward the end of November. Three were MS-13, the other an 18th Street gang member.
In mid November, ICE deported five illegal-alien criminals, four of whom were MS-13 members. Among their crimes were murder, homicide, and involvement in terror organizations.
In March, ICE concluded Operation Matador, which led to 475 arrests, a majority of them gang members: 274 were MS-13 members, and 15 were 18th Street gang members.
ICE deported 226,119 criminal aliens in fiscal 2017.
