A Street Gang and the Coming Constitutional Crisis
newsisyphus.blogspot.com
By NewSisyphus
Word reached us today that our colleagues at Immigration and Customs Enforcement have stuck a blow against the vicious Salvadorian gang Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13. As reported early this morning by CNN, ICE officers arrested over the past weeks around 103 known MS-13 gang members on criminal and immigration charges in a nation-wide operation that included strikes in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Newark, Miami and Dallas.
MS-13 is notable among gangs for a bloodthirsty mindlessness that distinguishes it in poor company, making the old crack-fuelled gang wars of the 1980’s seem positively tame by comparison. From its roots in Los Angeles (our hometown), MS-13 has grown not only to become a serious national organized crime problem, but an international one as well. As a gang expert and Orange County (Calif.) District Attorney Investigator Al Valdez has written:
Since its inception in California and Washington, DC, Mara Salvatrucha has expanded into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Canada, and Mexico. MS is unique in that, unlike traditional U.S. street gangs, it maintains active ties with MS members and factions in El Salvador. Mara Salvatrucha is truly an international gang.
Mara Salvatrucha gang members maintain contact between groups in the United States and El Salvador for several specific reasons. In El Salvador, a hand grenade sells for $1.00-$2.00 U.S. currency and an M-16 rifle will sell for approximately $200.00-$220.00 U.S. dollars. This communication and alliance provides a mechanism for MS gang members to access military-style munitions and also establishes a network to traffic illegal firearms into the United States.
Although military weapons seem to be readily available to this gang, street intelligence indicates they often have difficulty obtaining handguns, which are not readily available in El Salvador. This creates a demand for small arms by MS members in the U.S. and El Salvador. This demand is so high that MS members will often take handguns as payment for drug transactions. The guns are then sent back to El Salvador, or used in the United States.
MS is also involved in exporting stolen U.S. cars to South America. The cars are often traded for drugs when dealing with cartels. It is estimated that 80% of the cars driven in El Salvador were stolen in the United States. Car theft is a lucrative business for MS.
The Mara Salvatrucha gang is involved in a variety of criminal enterprises. As with members of other gangs, MS members seem willing to commit almost any crime, but MS gang members tend to have a higher level of criminal involvement than other gang members. MS members have been involved in burglaries, auto thefts, narcotic sales, home invasion robberies, weapons smuggling, car jacking, extortion, murder, rape, witness intimidation, illegal firearm sales, car theft and aggravated assaults. In terms of drug trafficking activities, common drugs sold by MS members include cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine. Mara Salvatrucha gang members have even placed a “tax” on prostitutes and non-gang member drug dealers who are working in MS "turf." Failure to pay up will most likely result in violence.
The common liberal, anti-law-enforcement line put out by academics and other sociological experts is that due to our harsh immigration law we unwisely deported L.A. gang members to El Salvador, thus internationalizing both a gang and a uniquely American gang culture. In this way, you see, Republicans are actually responsible for this travesty.
This story is nice and neat in that, in typical liberal racist fashion, people with brown skin are never responsible for their actions and, what is more, to the extent there is any responsibility to be had it lies with the all-controlling white folks who can determine minority people’s every move, emotion and thought through mere public policy stances.
The reality is quite different. The disastrous civil war in El Salvador left a legacy of deep brutalization of the population that, when mixed with our notoriously porous borders, has allowed a pathological strain to mix with a related cousin in our own indigenous gang culture. The result is a gang of almost unbelievable cruelty. From mass murders, to the execution of federal agents to the rape of deaf and disabled teenage girls, the fine members of MS-13 provide yet more proof that that Nazis were anything but an aberration and that civilization must always be fought for.
As of right now, MS-13 presents a serious, if surmountable, law enforcement challenge. But what if that was to change?
As was reported in the Boston Herald in January of this year, and as has been circulating in the rumor mills ever since, there have been stories to the effect that someone, somewhere has some evidence of an Al-Qaeda connected individual meeting with high-level members of MS-13 in San Salvador. (NOTE: As we have explained many times, we do not comment and never write about subjects on which our jobs have exposed us to classified materials; we have no way of knowing if what the Herald reported and the rumors have been saying is true). Apparently, this individual was inquiring about the possibility of Al-Qaeda or its sympathizers using the extensive smuggling network of MS-13 to enter and/or leave the United States undetected.
As we wrote about extensively at the end of February, the Supreme Court recently re-affirmed that the President has the authority to detain enemy combatants during the War on Terror, at least so long as hostilities are active and on-going. As a legal matter, it does not matter a bit if enemy combatants are U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents or aliens. Nor does it matter in an enemy combatant case that the President either cannot or does not want to pursue the matter through the criminal justice system. To recap the central holding of last year’s Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision, the Supreme Court ruled that:
The capture and detention of lawful combatants and the capture, detention, and trial of unlawful combatants, by "universal agreement and practice," are "important incident[s] of war." Ex parte Quirin. The purpose of detention is to prevent captured individuals from returning to the field of battle and taking up arms once again.
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There is no bar to this Nation's holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant . In Quirin, one of the detainees, Haupt, alleged that he was a naturalized United States citizen. We held that "[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of ... the law of war." While Haupt was tried for violations of the law of war, nothing in Quirin suggests that his citizenship would have precluded his mere detention for the duration of the relevant hostilities. Nor can we see any reason for drawing such a line here. A citizen, no less than an alien, can be "part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners" and "engaged in an armed conflict against the United States,"; such a citizen, if released, would pose the same threat of returning to the front during the ongoing conflict . (Emphasis added, citations removed).
Under this holding, if these rumors hold true and the President comes into possession of actionable intelligence indicating that Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group allied with it has entered into an alliance with MS-13, overnight the matter would convert from a regular criminal matter into a front of war. That being so, and under the authority the Court has so recently affirmed he was correct in claiming he possessed, the President of the United States could order the detention of all known or suspected MS-13 members. Under the additional procedural protections granted by Hamdi, such detainees would be afforded a chance to present evidence that they are not enemy combatants, but not necessarily in the civilian Federal court system.
This scenario is interesting because it illustrates in a dramatic way how the fact that we are at war and the fact of the Executive’s broad authority to prosecute that war could lead us quickly into a novel situation that would touch off a ferocious debate both here and abroad.
Based on our reading of the law, the President would be well in his rights to proceed as we have described. It is even possible that the few rumblings to this effect that are rumored to have issued from some White House personnel scuttled the deal brewing between Al-Qaeda and MS-13.
Whatever the true facts are, though, it appears to us that sooner rather than later that segment of the population that (wrongly) believes that we are neither at war nor that the President possesses a huge amount of power to win that war will be presented with, if not this one, a similar scenario. The resulting crisis could, in its own way, present as serious a threat to the United States as the enemy.
Yet another compelling reason for the President and his supporters to continue to educate, advocate and explain both what we are doing and why. |
