Across the country, federal agents are arresting members of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) U.S.-Salvadoran transnational gang designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration.
In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing transnational gangs and cartels to be designated as foreign terrorist organizations. In February, eight were designated as FTOs, including MS-13.
MS-13 is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s to protect Salvadoran illegal foreign nationals, but expanded the scope of its criminal enterprise. MS13 gang members engage in “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally,” they “are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere,” presenting “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump’s order states.
This was after more than 300,000 Salvadorans were reported illegally entering the country under the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.
Federal agents are actively searching for FTO members, including MS-13, to arrest and deport. In the first few months of the Trump administration, more than 2,700 terrorist organization members, including MS-13, were arrested, The Center Square reported.
In Maine, Border Patrol agents arrested two MS-13 members so far this year. They apprehended one Salvadoran in the country illegally during a vehicle stop only to learn he was wanted by Interpol for aggravated murder in El Salvador. In another incident, Border Patrol’s Anti-Smuggling Unit searched for and found an MS-13 member in Portland. Both men were detained to undergo removal proceedings.