Al-Qaeda-linked gang update, from the Washington Times, with thanks to RB:
NACO, Ariz. — Members of a violent Central America-based gang have been sent to Arizona to target Minuteman Project volunteers, who will begin a monthlong border vigil this weekend to find and report foreigner sneaking into the United States, project officials say.
James Gilchrist, a Vietnam veteran who helped organize the vigil to protest the federal government’s failure to control illegal immigration, said he has been told that California and Texas leaders of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, have issued orders to teach “a lesson” to the Minuteman volunteers.
“We’re not worried because half of our recruits are retired trained combat soldiers,” Mr. Gilchrist said. “And those guys are just a bunch of punks.”…
The MS-13 gang has established major smuggling operations in several areas along the U.S.-Mexico border and have transported hundreds of Central and South Americans — including gang members — into the United States in the past two years. The gang also is involved in drug and weapons smuggling.
Gang members in America have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortion, rapes and aggravated assaults. Authorities said that the gang has earned a reputation from the other street gangs as being particularly ruthless and that it will retaliate violently when challenged.
The MS-13 gang, with 20,000 members nationwide, has risen in recent months to such prominence that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has begun a nationwide crackdown on gang members in this country — as part of a sweeping law-enforcement initiative known as Operation Community Shield.
ICE agents arrested more than 100 members of the gang during limited raids that began in January in just six cities, including 35 who were taken into custody in Virginia and Maryland. The authorities said MS-13 gang members originally moved into the Los Angeles area in the 1980s.
MS-13 also has strongholds in Boston and Washington D.C.