Border arrests of MS-13 gang members have dropped dramatically amid the new border surge, a senior Republican senator said this week, warning that the criminals are still sneaking across but they’re avoiding detection amid the chaos of the unprecedented wave of illegal immigration.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Customs and Border Protection averaged 294 MS-14 arrests from 2017 to 2020. But the Iowa Republican said just 71 had been arrested this fiscal year through June.
“We know MS-13 is still trying to sneak into the country, they’re just more successful now. CBP is still arresting MS-13 members when they can identify them,” he said.
He said agents are doing their best in the circumstances they’ve been given, but he questioned whether the Justice Department is still on top of the issue in the interior of the country.
In particular, he said, Joint Task Force Vulcan, created by the Trump administration to disrupt MS-13, has gone silent under the Biden administration. The Iowa lawmaker fired off a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding to know what’s going on.
“This is a problem, because we know MS-13 is still ruthlessly operating on American streets. And Congress and the American people deserve to know what the DOJ is doing to keep our streets safe, and keep us safe from dangerous criminal organizations like MS-13,” Mr. Grassley said in a speech on the Senate floor.
CBP tallied 228 arrests of MS-13 members in 2017, 413 in 2018 and 464 in 2019, during the previous border surge. The number dropped to 72 arrests last year, amid stiffer border security and the coronavirus pandemic, which cut illegal attempts to cross.
This year CBP had made 71 arrests through June, making it certain the year will top the total from 2020. But it’s still far short of the total during the 2019 surge, raising questions about what’s going on.
The Washington Times reached out to CBP and the Justice Department for responses.
The MS-13 numbers closely track with overall gang arrests at the border, which are down from 976 in the 2019 surge to just 249 so far this year — even though 2021 has seen more arrests. MS-13, 18th Street, the Surenos and the Paisas gang are the most prevalent among border arrests.
The drop in gang arrests is particularly curious because Border Patrol agents have reported a major increase in arrests of convicted criminals overall, with 7,830 tallied over the first nine months of the fiscal year. By contrast in 2019, the last surge, agents made 4,269 arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions on their records.
Several Border Patrol sectors have reported that sex offenders, in particular, are being caught at record rates.
They’re part of the unprecedented wave of illegal migration that began with the Biden administration. While there have been months with higher overall totals in the late 1990s, the current mix of nationalities, families and unaccompanied juveniles makes this situation more challenging.
Early estimates are that 210,000 illegal immigrants were caught jumping the border in July, and that perhaps 37,000 others were known “gotaways,” with the Border Patrol aware of their crossing but not able to snare them.
The fear, security experts say, is that the missing MS-13 arrests are among those gotaways.
MS-13, whose full name is La Mara Salvatrucha, counts more than 10,000 members, the Justice Department says, most of them illegal immigrants.
A department report last year found that 74% of MS-13 members arrested on federal charges were in the U.S. without permission. Almost all members have ties to El Salvador or another Central American nation.
The gang is known for extortion, loyalty to the organization, and the bloody methods members use to punish those who cross them. MS-13-ordered murders, known as “green lighting,” are grisly affairs, with bodies hacked to pieces by machete and often burned or mutilated in other ways.
Border Patrol agents have seen MS-13 members try to sneak in pretending to be juveniles, hoping to take advantage of lax enforcement against illegal immigrant children coming alone or as part of families.
Or, in one instance in March, agents nabbed a group of 47 illegal immigrants traveling as a mini-caravan and found among them an MS-13 member who was traveling with his wife and two young children. The man had been deported from the U.S. twice before.
Inside the U.S., the Justice Department is still mounting prosecutions.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada announced an updated indictment this week charging four MS-13 members with a 12-month spree of 10 murders, along with kidnapping and racketeering.
And last week the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville released an updated 60-count indictment for nine accused MS-13 members of murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering and witness tampering.