I remember several years ago I had grand jury duty in my Atlanta-area county, and I was shocked at how many of the cases involved some sort of gang activity and affiliation with clear evidence provided by police officers and even confessions from some of the accused. When I told a liberal friend about it later, she rolled her eyes and said, "There is no such thing as 'gang activity.' It's just kids messing around and getting into trouble."
That has stuck with me through the years and I can't help but wonder if everyone on the left feels that way. If what we've seen over the last week — a Democrat senator flying to El Salvador to attempt to bring a noncitizen gang member back into the United States — is proof, I think it's safe to assume it's at least semi-true. Heck, just writing about the people who want to block deportations of these guys in Tren de Aragua and MS-13 tells me it's at least semi-true.
MS-13 is a far cry from kids "getting into trouble." The Salvadoran gang, which has been around since the 1960s, once turned an entire region of Central America — not just El Salvador — into the "murder capital of the world." They've taken over communities in the United States, especially in Los Angeles and the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and they have a presence in Spain and Italy as well. Ironically, the one place you won't find them today is El Salvador because the leaders in that country understand what they're capable of and refuse to allow it any longer.
Related: Who is Nayibe Bukele?
Back in February, when I was writing about Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, something he said about MS-13 during an interview with Tucker Carlson stood out and stuck with me: "They are Satanic." It's true. Some of the founding members of MS-13 were devil worshipers, and that has trickled down through the ranks over the decades and helped shape the criminal origination.
Why does this matter? Well, let's just say these guys aren't just selling dugs and killing rival gang members. I'll let Bukele explain:
Sometimes when you interview gang members that are in prison, they will say, 'I'm out of the gang.' Of course they're in prison, but they will say, 'I'm not a member of the gang anymore.' And when you ask them why... I remember one... I remember this very well known news outlet that made this interview with a gang member in person. We allowed them to go into prisons and, and do the interviews.
They, they asked him, 'How many people have you killed?' And he said, 'I don't remember.' He didn't remember how many. Probably 10, 20. He didn't remember. And then they asked him, 'What is your position in the gang?' He explained how he went up in positions, but, 'I left the gang.' They said, 'Why do you left the gang?' He said, 'Well, because, I was used to kill people, but I killed for territory, I killed to collect money, I killed for extortion.
But I came to this house and they were about to kill a baby. And he, the killer, that had killed tens of people said, 'Oh, wait, wait, what are we doing? Why, why, why we gonna kill that baby?' And they told him, 'Because the beast asked for a baby, so we have to give him a baby.' So he said that he couldn't resist that, so he left the gang. He's in prison because, you know, he's a killer, but he left the gang because he couldn't tolerate what he was seeing.
Carlson followed up by asking Bukele if this was really a human sacrifice. Bukele responded:
Yes. Well, in the, in the United States a couple of weeks ago, or a couple of days ago, I don't remember exactly, I saw the news that they were, they were gonna kill a young girl, or they killed a young girl, I don't, I don't exactly remember — satanic ritual. It happened in the U.S. a couple of weeks ago.
Carlson then pointed out that this is never explained "in English language press as clearly as you just described it."
"No. Which is weird, right?" Bukele asked.
Related: Bukele Gives Van Hollen Meeting With Gangbanger, Mercilessly Trolls Him on X
Weird, indeed. To be quite honest, this sent me down a rabbit hole over the last couple of months. I've spent a lot of time researching this and have been planning to write about it for some time, but it seems more timely than ever now. It seems like the press used to bring it up on occasion, but they don't anymore. Liberals would have you believe that these guys all just need a good slap on the wrist and they'll become upstanding citizens of the world, but that's not exactly the way it works. For many of them, it has become a spiritual mission. Based on what I've read, some of these guys have a mentality more like Hamas than your average run-of-the-mill street criminal.
Here's an example: In 2017, a 15-year-old named Genesis Cornejo Alvarado was found shot to death — with bullets in her head and chest, both shot from close range — and dumped in a road in Houston, Texas. She'd been missing for a month prior. As it turns out, two members of MS-13, Miguel Alvarez Flores and Diego Hernandez Rivera, murdered her. Both men were in the country illegally, and they'd kidnapped Cornejo Alvarado and at least one other girl between the ages of 14 and 16, held them captive in their apartment for a month, raped them, and forced them to do drugs. They also tattooed them.
The other girl who managed to escape told authorities that the two men had a satanic shrine in the apartment, and one day Cornejo Alvarado struck it. Alvarez Flores offered a cigarette to the shrine, but he said "the beast" wanted a soul instead. She said that's when one of the men shot Cornejo Alvarado in the head, and the other shot her in the chest. To make matters worse, the two men laughed and joked in the courtroom during their entire trial. Each was sentenced to 40 years in prison (they were only 18 and 22 at the time of the murder, so that's not even life potentially).
Also in 2017, a man was found in a shallow grave in Maryland's Wheaton Regional Park. "The victim had been stabbed over one-hundred times, decapitated, dismembered, and his heart had been excised from his chest and thrown into the grave," detectives wrote. Another Satanic killing.
(For a little perspective, in March, I wrote that on October 7, 2023 Hamas "brought machetes along, not to use as weapons, but to dismember and desecrate bodies for fun." Then again, Democrats like to defend Hamas too.)
In 2004, the L.A. Times reported, "The brutality of the gangs’ crimes is increasingly horrific. Homicide victims, including many women and teenage girls, often are found so mutilated that Spanish priest Jose Maria Morataya, who runs a San Salvador rehabilitation and job training center for former gang members…suspects that some gang members practice satanic rituals."
In 2006, an article in the Independent suggested that many members of MS-13 share a "belief that life and death are somehow intermingled. This belief partly explains the bones and devils tattooed on their bodies, as well as their satanic rituals, such as hacking a victim to death and scattering the organs on the ground in a pentagonal shape."
The Washington Post reported in 2017 that "As MS-13 violence returned to the United States with a vengeance in the mid 2000s — including a spate of high profile murders in the Washington region — so did reports of the gang’s satanism."
You get the idea.
I believe in second chances. I truly believe that there are criminals in this world who can be rehabilitated and will show lifelong remorse for their actions. I believe that there are even some members of MS-13 who might fit into this category. But many of these guys either grow up in these gangs or they start when they're just babies, not even old enough to drive in the U.S. (they're notorious for recruiting young teens). Combine that with the idea that they're ingrained with these types of spiritual beliefs that condone murdering someone innocent in cold blood for no reason, and you have your work cut out for you. Their minds don't work like yours and mine, and if they're left on the streets to continue, no one wins. That's something the left just doesn't seem to understand.
