Take Down of MS-13

 



I know that many of you have heard about MS-13.  They are a violent gang, with their origins in Central America.  Increasingly, they have populated American cities to wreak havoc here, doing whatever they wish with hardly any consequences.  But all of that has changed recently, because now they have finally been labeled as a terrorist organization and there are more resources and laws that can get them arrested for longer times and keep them off the streets where they can't hurt anyone. 

They are in many American cities, but what I didn't realize was that they have a large presence here in Virginia.  Mostly northern Virginia and Maryland.  But they also have a large presence on Long Island, New York, which was where I grew up.  

When I was a child, my step-father was Italian, his parents from Sicily. One day we were in the grocery store, and a man kept calling out to him, and my step-father was ignoring him.  I thought he couldn't hear the man, on the way out of the store I said, "That man over there keeps calling you, why won't you speak to him?"  He told me that the man was in the Mafia, and he hated anyone who was in the Mafia. He told me that when he was a kid in Brooklyn, NY, men like him would come to his house and take "protection money" from his parents. If they didn't pay, they would get hurt badly from the mob.   My step-father had 8 brothers and sisters, and didn't have a lot of money, and when these criminals would take the protection money, it meant food was scarce.  He told me they ate sugar sandwiches, or sometimes nothing at all.  He didn't want anything to do with any of them for his entire life. 

Why am I telling you this?  Because that is what MS-13 does to the Latino community.

"MS-13 preys upon our immigrants by trafficking their daughters, beating and killing their sons for any sign of disrespect against the gang and by extorting hardworking immigrant families in this country by threatening them with violence in the United States as well as Central America," Terwiliger said. "Fighting MS-13 is not anti-immigrant. Fighting MS-13 is about as pro-immigrant as it gets."

The district attorney of Eastern Virginia, Zachery Terwiliger, has been fighting this terrorist organization for over a decade.  He announced on August 5th, that they had been able to arrest 11 members for sexually trafficking and beating a 13 year old girl for months.  They were doing this in exchange for money and drugs.  This arrest is just the beginning, now with the help of the FBI, they can catch and arrest more of these horrible criminals and put them away for ever.

One of the problems, the district attorney said in the video I linked below, is that when one leader or group gets arrested, they just get replaced with new members. The reason for that is because of the lack of a border wall and security between us and Mexico.  He likened it to a game of "whack a mole", where you get rid of one, but more just keep popping up and the problem never goes away.  Thankfully, now that the border wall is finally going up, he sees progress in that new MS-13 gang members can't just sneak into the country like they did before.  I will also say that the border was also where many sexually trafficked females, and children were sneaked into the country, and that is being stopped as well.  The building of the border wall was not to stop good people from getting here.  Think about it, if you have no criminal record, or are an innocent person, you won't be stopped from coming here.  Only the criminals get stopped at a border, and those people will try to sneak right in and do whatever they want. 

Attorney General Bill Barr also gave Virginia a grant in the amount of 868,000 dollars to help with the housing of sexually abused children, to help in their rehabilitation and with shelter and food.  Thankfully, this administration has done a lot more than any other to combat terrorists and human traffickers.  I am hoping to see more arrests in the future, and hopefully we can get these criminals off the streets.



Comments

  1. Thank you! Great article. The peoples of the world can't li e like this anymore.

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