Agents Raid Home, Question Suspected Gang Members’ Families
POSTED: 10:25 pm PDT September 7, 2005
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- Federal agents in Santa Cruz County are looking to break up what they call a violent street gang with ties to paramilitary groups in Central America.
The agents raided a home on Seventh Avenue in Santa Cruz Wednesday.
The FBI provided backup as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, questioned the families of suspected gang members.
The gang, called the Mara Salvatruchas, is relatively new in the Bay Area.
The Mara Salvatruchas are strong in Los Angeles and the gang has strong influence in El Salvador.
Police said gang members are very violent and are starting to spread out in northern California. They said the Mara Salvatruchas are even more violent than the Nortenos and Surenos, the dominant gangs in the Bay Area.
San Jose's former police chief said he remembers the gang's ruthless recruiting tactics from his time as a diplomat in El Salvador in the late 1990s.
"There are many young men who join the gang. If they don't, they'll kill them. I saw it so graphically, people being shot to death because they refuse to join the gang. So, most of them got the message: It's either join, or die," the former police chief said.
FBI officials said ICE will more than likely deport the gang members they arrest back to El Salvador.
The federal agents' actions against the Mara Salvatruchas are part of a national trend to combat international gangs.
Experts said that if the gang members are deported, they will likely face death because a group in El Salvador that is fed up with gang violence has now resorted to vigilante justice.
POSTED: 10:25 pm PDT September 7, 2005
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- Federal agents in Santa Cruz County are looking to break up what they call a violent street gang with ties to paramilitary groups in Central America.
The agents raided a home on Seventh Avenue in Santa Cruz Wednesday.
The FBI provided backup as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, questioned the families of suspected gang members.
The gang, called the Mara Salvatruchas, is relatively new in the Bay Area.
The Mara Salvatruchas are strong in Los Angeles and the gang has strong influence in El Salvador.
Police said gang members are very violent and are starting to spread out in northern California. They said the Mara Salvatruchas are even more violent than the Nortenos and Surenos, the dominant gangs in the Bay Area.
San Jose's former police chief said he remembers the gang's ruthless recruiting tactics from his time as a diplomat in El Salvador in the late 1990s.
"There are many young men who join the gang. If they don't, they'll kill them. I saw it so graphically, people being shot to death because they refuse to join the gang. So, most of them got the message: It's either join, or die," the former police chief said.
FBI officials said ICE will more than likely deport the gang members they arrest back to El Salvador.
The federal agents' actions against the Mara Salvatruchas are part of a national trend to combat international gangs.
Experts said that if the gang members are deported, they will likely face death because a group in El Salvador that is fed up with gang violence has now resorted to vigilante justice.
