LatinNews Daily - 24 April 2017

Central America: On 18 April, the US government announced that there will be ‘zero tolerance’ towards criminal street gangs under President Donald Trump’s administration. Following an executive order issued by President Trump on 9 February on enforcing US federal law with respect to transnational gangs, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said that the US government will undertake actions to eliminate street gang criminality. Sessions positions the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), a street gang founded in Los Angeles in 1980s by primarily Salvadorean immigrants and descendants, as a core symbol of such criminal organisations and highlighted the gangs’ serious threat to US national security. MS-13 has an estimated 30,000 members overseas, with headquarters in Salvadorean prisons. The US National Gang Intelligence Center states that MS-13 has more than 10,000 members in at least 40 states in the US. Sessions argued that several years of open borders and weak immigration enforcement had enabled MS-13 to send recruiters and members to the US. With the zero tolerance policies, the US government aims to secure borders, expand immigration enforcement, and cut off supply lines to criminal gangs. Sessions also emphasised how the so called ‘sanctuary cities’ undermine this process, as harbouring criminal gang members only helps support gangs such as MS-13. Sanctuary cities are US cities that refuse to fulfil federal directives to detain criminals and endanger the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

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