Trump Threatens to Pull ICE From California to Teach State a Lesson

[BumRushDaShow]

24. Excerpt from article from just over 10 years ago

A Fearsome Gang and Its Wannabes

By CARA BUCKLEYAUG. 19, 2007

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But critics question whether the federal government is overstating the gang’s reach. According to F.B.I. estimates, other gangs have far more members nationally. For instance, the agency puts membership in the 18th Street gang somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000; the Bloods at between 15,000 to 20,000, and the Gangster Disciples at between 50,000 to 100,000.

In February, a report by the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit advocacy group, and the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico found few if any links between MS-13 members in Washington, D.C., and Central America and Mexico. Connie McGuire, the research and outreach coordinator of the nonprofit group, said there was no evidence of any organized network among far-flung members.

“Obviously there are individuals who need to be taken seriously who are committing serious crimes,” Ms. McGuire said. “But there’s been this portrayal of gangs as a menace that is spreading all over the continent.” “From our understanding, that’s not the general trend,” she said.

Alex Alonso, an academic who tracks gangs in Los Angeles and runs the Web site streetgangs.com, says all the attention on MS-13 has only added to the gang’s mystique. As a result, Mr. Alonso says, MS-13 has displaced the Bloods and the Crips in the popular imagination, prompting copycat gangs to form. If you’re a rebellious 15-year-old yearning to join a gang, Mr. Alonso said, what could be more alluring than becoming part of the one that has been anointed the most dangerous in the country, or indeed the world? “The feds are linking little gangs in places like South Dakota to a national network, when the kids probably never met MS-13 people,” Mr. Alonso said. “All they did was go on the Internet or to a magazine or newspaper and say, ‘That’s the gang we are.’ ”

And while insisting they do not dismiss the violence MS-13 has wrought, both Ms. McGuire and Mr. Alonso also claim that the heightened focus on the gang and other transnational gangs is related to the immigration debate.“These gangs, and the way they are visually, make a really scary image of an ‘illegal immigrant,’” Ms. McGuire said. “It’s not a coincidence that in this moment of all these tensions around immigration issues that there are new policies about transnational gangs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/weekinreview/19buckley.html

This analysis article was written when Shrub was in office. And surprise surprise, the "immigration debate" is going on once more and up pops this group.