Zoe asked:


PHARR, Texas – Shortly after midnight in late September, a Texas National Guard soldier with night-vision equipment spied four figures slipping through the brush and alerted Border Patrol agents.

The men were arrested, and one in particular stood out for the extensive tattoos across his face, body and arms.

A fingerprint check showed Santos Chileno-Gomez, a 23-year-old Salvadoran, had been deported for an assault on a Long Island, N.Y., police officer. His lengthy criminal record – and the tattoos – labeled him as a member of Mara Salvatrucha 13, a vicious international street gang that federal authorities call one of the most violent in the U.S.

Mr. Chileno-Gomez is among 76 MS-13 members apprehended by the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley during the just-ended fiscal year. That total was up from 62 the previous year, showing the gang’s resilience to federal efforts aimed at rooting it out and its determination to travel almost at will through Texas to cliques operating throughout the U.S.

And, some police agencies believe, there is evidence that MS-13 has taken sides in the bloody war among drug cartels that’s playing out in Nuevo Laredo.
MS-13 is as much a terrorist group as al-Qaeda, even though there is no evidence of collaboration between the two organizations
Yet.Their methods are eerily similar, even if their objectives are not. Both use intimidation of non-members as their way of blending in, like leaving decapitated bodies as a warning to others, a tactic that has been used by both organizations. Infiltrations into neighboring countries to carry out specific missions, such as transfer of armaments or illegal drugs, is customary. And contempt for the law and culture of the countries they choose to bring their depredations upon is another common trait.

So far as may be determined, MS-13 has no religious affiliation, but given their propensity for violence, looking to Islam and the Koran for justification for their wholesale onslaught against everyone who is not part of the organization, would have the further advantage of allowing a cloak of righteousness and virtue to fall over their shoulders. After all, a divine power would surely support their cause. Look what it has done for Osama bin Ladin.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/102906dntexMS13.2e3e193.html