The Mara Salvatrucha Enigma

June 24th: Jennifer Riviera Lopez, age 21, is reported missing. She’s discovered September 20th, tortured and dismembered in a shallow grave at Elks Camp Barrett, Crownsville. August 1st: a 15-year old girl in Kensington, Montgomery County, Maryland is beaten 28 times with a bat “for not being a good enough prostitute.”

The girl’s beating was so severe, she was left with indented buttocks, extensive bruising, and visible bleeding from the neck down.

August 5th: Neris Giovani Bonilla-Palacios, age 17, reported missing August 5th, is discovered buried in a shallow grave October 5th near Quiet Waters Park, Annapolis.

Also, in August, David Riviera is reported missing. He has yet to be found. September: An unidentified man later found to have connections to Annapolis is discovered stabbed 100 times, decapitated, with his heart cut out and buried separately in Wheaton Park, Montgomery County.

Also, in September the body

of Jose Hernandez-Portillo, 22, missing since 2016, is found in a shallow grave near Quiet Waters Park.

It’s the summer 2017. At Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, adults enjoy bucolic evenings at summer concerts and children make the most of time on the water at camp. Elks Camp Barrett, Crownsville. Scouts romp and play in the great outdoors. Montgomery County, Maryland. Residents enjoy all the perks that life in the Washington, D.C. suburbs offers: fine dining, shopping, museums, events.

Beyond the concerts, camps, and al fresco evenings that define summer in the Chesapeake Bay region, a grim and heartbreaking timeline plays out. Young people are reported missing and bodies are discovered in shallow graves. Sadly, then and now, beyond mention in the local newspaper, few people are aware of these children’s plight outside of their own families and communities. 

What do each of these crimes have in common? The assaults of Jennifer, Neris, the unidentified student, and the two boys beaten in Hillsmere, were all tied to Latin criminal gangs. While there are many Latin gangs with a presence in Maryland, northern Virginia, and across the country—Latin Kings, 18th Street Gang, Florencia 13—the most notorious of these in Anne Arundel County is MS13. 

Anne Arundel County and Annapolis police report that of the roughly 10,000 MS13 members in the United States, there are about 200 to 250 in our area. Pinning down exact statistics on just how many Latin gang members live here is a nebulous science based on anecdotal reports, witnesses, criminal confessions, and arrests. Regardless, these gangs are willing to perpetuate evil and havoc. 

Jennifer, a former student of Annapolis High School, was lured by Brenda Argueta to join acquaintances for an evening. She was tortured, strangled, and dismembered at Elks Camp Bennett in Crownsville. Police have not released a motive. Several people, including Argueta, age 18, have been arrested and charged with her murder. Among her killers is Argueta along with Ronald Adonay Mendez-Sosa, former student of Annapolis High School, and Ervin Arrue-Figuero, also a student at Annapolis High who continued to attend classes until he was arrested.

Neris, just 17 years old, was murdered with a machete. Marcos Melendez-Gamez, also 17 and a resident of Annapolis, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and other crimes for acting as a lookout.

Jose was 22 when he went missing. When his remains were found a year later, at Quiet Waters Park, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide by significant sharp force trauma, a method commonly used by MS13 to murder victims. One of the six men charged in his death, Juan Carlos Sandoval-Rodriguez, is a 20-year old previously charged with assaulting the Annapolis High School student who refused to join MS13 in 2017. 

Beyond being Latino, and beyond their tragic and horrific deaths, these victims have another thing in common: they were young, just 15 to 22 years old. They were in the prime of their lives. And they were preyed upon by fellow immigrants, their neighbors, their peers, and companion students. 

While police don’t offer motives or cause for these murders, they all bear the hallmark touch of MS13, a gang that relies on intimidation, extortion, assassination, and murder to advance their strength and their power position in relation to other gangs.  

Why Should You Care

The United States Census Bureau 2017 American Community Survey indicates that the Latino community comprises about 20 percent of the Annapolis population. Police and city leaders estimate that number is closer to 25 percent. This means that one in four or five people in our community identify as being from Mexico, Central America, or another Latin country. Most are from El Salvador. 

Anne Arundel County Police Chief Tim Altomare says that within 48 hours of arriving in the United States, immigrants will be surveilled by local members of Latin gangs. They will be targeted according to where they are from—their country, their neighborhood, even the street where they lived—their political associations, their motivations for coming to America, and their family members left behind. 

By the end of the week, these migrants and refugees, all who come to the United States to escape gangs and to seek a better life than the misery they left behind, will be actively recruited. “Before too long, [new arrivals] are only allowed to go where the gang tells you, to talk to who they say. They have total control within days,” Altomare says. 

Control is asserted via threat of death to family members both here and abroad. Power is expressed through rampant extortion: the gang is a tax collector for the undocumented restaurant workers, landscapers, construction crews, and laborers who form a key work force in our economy. Asked if the gentleman who landscapes my neighbor’s yards is extorted, if that man’s son has been or is being recruited, Altomare answers, absoultely. 

Because these crimes happen in a closely knit and insular community, and because they are not always reported by the victims nor in publications other than the local newspaper, you, the reader, probably know nothing of this suffering. 

What is MS13?

MS13 originated in the barrios of Los Angeles in the 1970s and ’80s, a time of brutal lawlessness, revolution, and civil war in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Citizens of El Salvador, in particular, sought asylum in the United States, but were refused refugee status under President Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy. Nevertheless, they arrived illegally, surviving on undocumented, low-wage jobs and living with the constant fear of deportation back to their war-torn and impoverished homelands. 

These immigrants were especially vulnerable, not just to deportation, but also to extortion and harassment from Latin, Asian, and black gangs who also populated the Los Angeles barrios. The first MS13 members were young heavy metal fans with a juvenile appreciation for ruthless Mexican gangs and an innate desire to protect their families and communities regardless of the cost. Violence, honed by a youth spent in the El Salvador Civil War (1980–1992) made famous for government-ordered massacres, machete killings, and child soldiers, much less by rampant corruption and dire poverty, became the hallmark of Mara Salvatrucha, MS13’s full name. 

The gang’s motto is mata, viola, controla: Kill, Rape, Control. Members are “jumped in” to the gang in one of two ways: either they are beaten for 13 seconds—the length of that potentially long segment of time determined by the local

“clique” leader; or less often, they are sexed in. Members report to a local leader, who then reports to the “Big Homies,” a group of leaders at the top of the gang’s hierarchy, all based in El Salvador. These Big Homies direct gang recruitment, gang activity, and even migration of gang members from Central America to specific cities in the United States. 

Mara Salvatrucha has long been considered to be less organized than other criminal enterprises. Historically, MS13 has been more interested in exerting control and power than in money. In recent years, this has changed. Drug trafficking, extortion, child trafficking, prostitution, and robbery are the gang’s chief sources of revenue. MS13’s particular brand of unconscionable violence is directly related to historical events of the late-20th century in Central America, the birthplace of the gang in Los Angeles, El Salvador’s failed juvenile justice system, the region’s institutional poverty, and desensitization to tactics synonymous with wartime brutality.

MS13 was relatively unknown in our area until the last decade. Although the gang originated in Los Angeles, it spread to San Francisco, Massachusetts, New York, and other centers of Central American immigration under the direction of Ernesto Deres, a former El Salvadorian Special Forces soldier trained by the United States Green Berets. According to reports, he used his training in logistics, operations, and military discipline to grow the gang. 

Simultaneous to the spread of Deres’ local cliques, federal immigration policies led to giant leaps in the number of gang members returned to Central America. When President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility law in 1996, it became much easier for the government to deport both lawful permanent residents convicted of even relatively minor crimes and illegal, undocumented immigrants. At the same time, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Violent Gang Task Force, created in 1992, began work with local police to target immigrant gang members for deportation. When gang members were deported back to home countries already steeped in violence, their savage mentality fermented. Latin gangs grew in numbers and correspondingly, in power. 

In 2012, MS13 was named a transnational criminal organization by the United States Treasure Department. 

MS13 in Anne Arundel County

MS13 gained its notoriety in the Mid-Atlantic region in the early 2000s following several brutal incidents, peaking locally in Anne Arundel County by summer 2017. These accounts startled and concerned Annapolis and Anne Arundel County leadership and law enforcement, though they were aware of the gang and its movement into the area. Former County Executive Steve Schuh ordered Altomare and his staff to execute a determined, methodical, and sustained operation against MS13 and its related entities, 18th Street and Latin Kings. Additionally, Governor Larry Hogan established a gang task force that same summer. Altomare and the Annapolis Police Department joined the group, which includes state and federal law enforcement. The task force was charged with forming a comprehensive strategy to prevent the growth of MS13 while at the same time engaging the full force of the law enforcement and justice system to eradicate the gang.

Children, young boys and girls, either armed for conflict in the El Salvador Civil War, 1980-1992, or in its midst. These photos symbolize a pervasive awareness of violence in El Salvadorean culture. War, government atrocities, extrajudicial killings and gang violence have been a part of civilian life in Central America since the late 1970s. This may explain the MS13’s desensitized reaction to what others would consider inhumane and extreme crime.

“From a law enforcement perspective, [violent gangs] are all the same animal,” Altomare says. “MS13 is attacking our community, members of our community family, and just because they have a strategy of trying to weasel their way around one ethnic group doesn’t change the fact that an attack on one is an attack on all.” 

There have been multiple cases of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of Latin gang violence. In his book, Operation Devil Horns: The Takedown of MS13 in San Francisco, author Ray Bulger reveals the 2008 murder of Tony Bologna and his sons, Michael and Matthew. The Bologna sons were mistakenly targeted by the killer as rival gang members. While there are no reported cases of such crossover in Annapolis or Anne Arundel County, the potential remains and law enforcement is sensitive to the possibility. 

To better understand the job ahead, the gang task force—including Altomare, federal agents, local police officers, and other experts—travelled to Central America where they could learn first-hand about the gang: why the gang is desensitized to violence from a young age, the theories and facts on why the gang’s methodologies are so brutal and sadistic, and the best methods for bringing gang members to justice. 

Understanding the Fear Factor

Chief Altomare’s job is to defend as much as it is to comfort. He takes the violence invoked by MS13 seriously. To be clear, he takes the violence invoked by any gang seriously. “What I really want to tell people is that it is extremely important to me as a man and as a cop that I will move heaven and earth to keep them safe,” he says. “I don’t care where you are from, what color your skin is, what your socioeconomic position is. I will do anything to take a predator off the street. I will use any tool at my disposal to do that, to go after the bad guys with everything I’ve got.” 

Today, cities in El Salvador are immersed in crime and poverty. A young man lays slain on the sidewalk; and homelessness is ubiquitous. Such conditions have driven many El Salvadorans to immigrate northward to Mexico and the United States. 

Altomare—and the gang task force—sought to understand why young people and newly arrived residents turn to the gang versus local officials for help, even though they have lived through and are well aware of the gang’s escalating levels of violence, murder, and extortion. Experts say that migrant children are especially vulnerable and turn to the gang for practical assistance, for example finding a job, as well as for companionship in a foreign land. The primary reason is fear. If a resident is extorted or harmed by the gang, they might be afraid to turn to law enforcement for help and may be unwilling to serve as a witness to crime, largely out of fear that they could be deported. This same fear, or the very real worry that the gang might make good on threats to harm family members or even report undocumented residents to authorities, might also serve as a reliable tool for gang recruitment.

Joe Hudson is the civilian Latino Liaison for the Annapolis Police Department. His role requires him to be available to his constituents 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hudson treats his position more as a vocation and responsibility than as a job. He offers Spanish translations for the police department, visits local public schools to assist both administration and students, makes presentations to officials and community leaders, and helps Annapolis residents find food, shelter, and clothing. By his own admission, he is a mentor, an advocate, a supporter, and a shoulder to cry on. Hudson was impacted personally by the loss of Jennifer, Neris, David, and Jose. Any loss of life is painful to him, but he knew these kids, he knows their friends and family, and he had personally helped them. Because of his close ties to the Latino community, he has intimate knowledge of what immigrants experienced in their home countries and en route to Maryland. 

I don’t care where you are from, what color your skin is, what your socioeconomic position is. I will do anything to take a predator off the street. I will use any tool at my disposal to do that, to go after the bad guys with everything I’ve got.”—Police Chief Tim Altomare

People need to understand that 99 percent of the Latino community is completely unrelated to the gangs, fled here to escape the gang, and wants nothing to do with them.” —Annapolis Alderman Marc Rodriguez

Until everybody gets involved and understands the humanitarian crisis both south of the border and here in our own communities, we will have a long way to go.” —City of Annapolis Hispanic Liaison Joe Hudson

Hudson says the trauma and fear that people from the “Northern Triangle” (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) face daily is nearly indescribable. Home to just 8 percent of the world’s population, El Salvador and Honduras see over 38 percent of global homicides, the highest rate of any country not in a war zone and triple that of Mexico. Honduras has among the highest rates of female murder in the world. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, extortion is rampant and flagrant. Some gangs occupy street corners, demanding a tax to cross the street, visit a grocery store, or even pray in a church. 

In 2017, 39 percent of migrants to the United States from these three countries were unaccompanied children and adolescents, a number up from just 2 percent recorded by the United States Border Control from 2003 to 2009. Although USBP statistics on apprehension of illegal immigrants were the fourth lowest level since 1972, the number of children was much higher than ever before. 

The same children, newly arrived to Annapolis, who attend our schools and churches, who shop in our stores, and play with us on sports teams, have directly experienced or have family members who have lived this violence. According to Hudson, many of the children who journey unsupported to the Unites States travel via La Bestia, a train that runs from Central America through Mexico. MS13 has become so savvy, that they post members on that train to photograph and document riders; information used to identify, threaten, extort, and recruit them upon arrival to the U.S. 

The Latino population in Anne Arundel County is centered in Annapolis. Schools like Tyler Heights, Georgetown, Annapolis Middle, Bates Middle, and Annapolis High are home to a growing number of Latino students. Reports of gang bullying in these schools range from disallowing particular colors of clothing, shoes and haircuts, to threats of violence against family members and ultimately to demands that these children participate in nefarious and criminal activities. Gang recruitment in this cluster of schools is common. This violence against children must be stopped. 

Controversial Solutions to Infectious Crime

Going after the bad guys is complicated. It’s easy to look at the evil perpetrated by gangs like MS13 and to draw immediate conclusions about detection, detention, and deportation. President Donald Trump has used MS13 as a supporting argument for his views and policy regarding immigration. Though his policies and proposals have met scrutiny, the American government must seek tangible and enforceable ways to control illegal immigration. American law enforcement also must seek ways to make sure violent criminals don’t return after deportation. Democrats and Republicans espouse this view. 

Trump contrarians often cite the need to better understand the circumstances immigrants are trying to flee and to kill the gangs at their very roots. In his recent Washington Post article, José Miguel Cruz, director of research in the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University wrote: “In pointing to MS13 to try to scare Americans into harsh new immigration restrictions, Trump is overstating the danger the gang poses here in the United States. Worse, by using the gang to demonize all Latino immigrants, Trump is building inner-city walls that alienate communities and risk making criminal organizations more powerful, both here and overseas.” 

Annapolis Alderman Marc Rodriguez agrees. He works closely with the Annapolis Latino community, which makes up much of Ward 5, his district off Hilltop Avenue. He says the President’s approach to the gangs is misguided and even detrimental to the cause. Rodriguez has received death threats for his efforts to promote a better understanding between nationalists and the local Latino community, and for his vocal disregard for politics that leave Latino residents disenfranchised, unsupported, and living in fear. 

“It’s important to start with some numbers,” he says. “There are 1.4 million estimated gang members in the entire country; about 10,000 are related to MS13. Reportedly 200 of those are in Anne Arundel County. People need to understand that 99 percent of the Latino community is completely unrelated to the gangs, fled here to escape the gang, and wants nothing to do with them.” 

Rodriguez took umbrage against Schuh’s decision to defund the county’s Resident Access to a Coalition of Health (REACH) program, which provided low cost or free access to a wide variety of medical care for residents who don’t qualify for state or national insurance. He cites Schuh’s refusal to approve the Board of Education’s request for thirty English as a Second Language (ESOL) teachers. He also cites Schuh’s controversial decision to participate in the 287G program, a deal he signed in 2017 but was revoked by his incumbent Steuart Pittman in December 2018.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, administers the 287G program, training county correctional officers to use federal databases to screen new inmates for immigration violations, warrants, and prior crimes.

ICE partners with 78 local governments across 20 states in jail enforcement agreements. Data shows that Anne Arundel County screened 180 inmates from December 2017 to November 2018. Of those screened, 64 received ICE detainers with 36 of them committing violent crimes ranging from murder to burglary. The rest committed non-violent offenses such as driving without a license, DUI, or credit card fraud.

Schuh also negotiated an agreement with ICE that pays the county a minimum of $1.7 million a year for use of 130 beds in a vacant section of the Ordnance Road Correction Center. Schuh defended this approach. “Eighty percent of those we arrest for gang activity are in the country illegally,” he says. “This is a direct consequence of the failure of the federal government to control the borders. Our police have zero involvement in immigration enforcement. We don’t ask people their immigration status, and police are disallowed from involving themselves in any way—their job is to build strong relationships, so we can find out about the criminal community. However, in the jail, we do care. If someone is put in jail under 287G, we interrogate, find immigration status, or discover a member of a gang, we alert federal authorities, including Homeland Security that we are in possession of a criminal illegal immigrant and that individual is turned over to federal authorities, after they’ve served their term of confinement.” 

At last fall’s Dia de Los Muertos event in the City of Annapolis, Latino culture and heritage was celebrated. The City aims to plan similar events with a Latino focus in 2019.

Schuh and his supporters have a point: according to the Center for Immigration Studies, from 2005 to 2014 ICE arrested approximately 4,000 MS13 members, leaders, and associates. This represents about 13 percent of all gang members they arrested nationwide (31,000) during that period. According to this same report, 92 percent of the MS13 affiliated aliens arrested were illegal. Of those, 16 percent had entered illegally at least twice.

But Rodriguez calls these deals “prison for pay.” He says most families have a residency status that places them in the pipeline for recognition as refugees. An arrest, or even a report to local officials could threaten that placement, regardless of innocence. 

Additionally, the arrest and deportation of just one person could make their dependents even more vulnerable physically and financially when the gang comes calling. When the family breadwinner gets deported, even for a misdemeanor, the dependents might turn to the gang for help. 

Lastly, Rodriguez says, the policy is blatantly biased against foreign nationals from Central America. “Immigration-related enforcement is a federal issue and should not be placed on the shoulders of local law enforcement and the taxpayer,” Rodriguez says. “[The 287G] program is a for-profit mission to go out hunting for Latinos, because that’s where you make money. It assumes everyone’s a criminal. The Latino community hears about that, and that is exactly when MS13 steps in. This is specifically why victims and witnesses won’t come forward because their immigration status might become complicated.”

Finding Common Ground

“This is not something that county or city government can fix. You aren’t going to arrest your way out of a gang situation,” Joe Hudson explains. “It is complicated. Until everybody gets involved and understands the humanitarian crisis both south of the border and here in our own communities, we will have a long way to go.”

Hudson says to eradicate MS13 in Anne Arundel County, our advocates, community groups and even our voters will have to remove the politics and add empathy. “They are an invisible society,” Hudson says. “They come to mow your yard and clean your house, and you don’t even have to speak to them. Most people don’t even try to find common ground.”

Even representatives of federal law enforcement agencies agree that community action needs to be a part of any agenda that aims to counteract gang violence. “The idea that human life means nothing to these gang members should shock the conscience, and we cannot allow this type of thinking to take hold in our youth. We need help in addressing the violence, by the community supporting churches, community programs, and activists who can provide a positive alternative to the deadly future MS13 offers,” states Special Agent in Charge William Sweeney of the FBI New York Field Office’s Counterterrorism Division.  

As Marc Rodriguez so pointedly noted, there is no public safety threat to a group that doesn’t impact the whole. “The most important response to crime in any of our communities is outreach and support and building relationships that say I care about you, and I care about our community.” 

Any attempt to address murder, intimidation, and terror must include a recognition of the deep complexities that contribute to the culture of violence that is personified by MS13. It’s equally important to recognize that the people who come to this community—legally or otherwise—have some other option than joining the gang and some degree of confidence that they have more security here than in the place that they left. 

Perhaps in reaching out to find common ground, we can honor the lives of Jennifer, Neris, David, Jose, and the many others killed or harmed by MS13. Perhaps by doing this honor, we send a message to the parents, relatives, friends, and fellow students of these children: you deserve a safe, productive, and healthy life and we are ready to help you find that.

Get Involved

Resources and Information

If you want to take direct action to help, consider acting as a community connection. There are several ways where you might be able to donate time, talent, and resources: 

Volunteer at Latino outreach programs at Anne Arundel County Public Libraries

Participate in after school programs like Big Brothers, Big Sisters

Help youth groups such as El Joven Noble, Xinatchli Brief, and Cara y Corazon (contact Joe Hudson)Teach English language classes at local churches and community centers

Offer assistance such as filling out paperwork and connecting people to community resources at community centers

Encourage your church to reach out to form partnerships with the Latino community

Vote for community leaders willing to take on the complex challenges of eradicating gangs, addressing immigration and immigrant issues, and supporting local youth in smart and humane ways 

Support Contacts Include:

Anne Arundel County Latino/Hispanic Outreach 410-222-1879 aacounty.org/services-and-programs/latinohispanic-outreach

City of Annapolis Hispanic Liaison Joe Hudson 410-268-9000, ext. 7304 annapolis.gov/712/Hispanic-Liaison

City of Annapolis Hispanic Community Relations Specialist

Adriana Lee410-570-9052 alee@annapolis.govCentro de Ayuda (Center of Help)1906 Forest Drive, Suite 2A and 2B, Annapolis410-295-3434 centerofhelp.org