[25][26][27][28][29][30][excessive citations] At least one faction of MS-13 – the Fulton clique in Los Angeles – has required prospective members to commit a murder in order to be considered for full-fledged membership.

[2] Mara Salvatrucha gang members are typically impoverished young men and teenagers, who are often homeless and estranged from family, and who subsist on minor drug dealing, theft and extortion of street vendors and other small-time criminals.

[34][35][36] Their wide-ranging activities have drawn the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who have initiated wide-scale raids against known and suspected gang members, arresting hundreds across the United States.

[44] Law enforcement officials have reported an increased coordination of criminal activity among the gang's cliques in the Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York metropolitan areas.

[44] In 2002, several high-ranking MS-13 members began establishing the Ranfla Nacional, the gang's "command and control structure", which has directed acts of violence and murders in El Salvador and the United States.

[15] The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported in 2008 that the highest threat from Mara Salvatrucha was in the Western and Northeastern U.S., coinciding with elevated Salvadoran immigrant populations in those areas.

[6] In early 2018, the district attorney for Nassau County, New York, stated that an investigation had "uncovered a structured network of MS-13 operations in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Texas, from within a Mississippi prison cell, and in countries around the globe including Mexico, Colombia, Korea, France, Australia, Peru, Egypt, Ecuador and Cuba.

Mara Salvatrucha's operations in Spain were provided with financial and logistical support by the gang's El Salvador-based leadership as part of MS-13's expansionist agenda known as Programa 34 ("Program 34").

In 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) created the MS-13 National Gang Task Force, which facilitates cooperation among local and state law enforcement agencies in order to dismantle MS-13.

The strategies of the Task Force include the deportation of Mara Salvatrucha members to their home countries, an effort which has instead exacerbated the gang problem by excelling its proliferation internationally.

[72] While the three leaders (José Luís Mendoza Figueroa, Eduardo Erazo Nolasco, and Élmer Canales Rivera) were imprisoned in El Salvador, they continued to give orders.

The second phase was between October 8 and November 11, 2017, and resulted in 214 arrests in the U.S. Charges included drug trafficking, child prostitution, human smuggling, racketing, and conspiracy to commit murder.

[80] In January 2021, Acting United States Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen announced terrorism charges against fourteen MS-13 leaders known as "Ranfla Nacional" and imprisoned in El Salvador.

[82][83] On November 3, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a press release stating that Yulan Adonay Archaga Carias was being added to the FBI's list of Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives with a $100,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

[88] The same day, the United States Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced his sanctioning through placement on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List pursuant to Executive Order 13581.

[9] Members partake in additional criminal activities including alien smuggling, weapons trafficking, assault, homicide, rape, kidnapping, identification theft, home invasions, carjackings, prostitution, robbery, and vandalism.

[144] On December 23, 2004, one of the most widely publicized MS-13 crimes in Central America occurred in Chamelecón, Honduras, when an intercity bus was intercepted and sprayed with automatic gunfire from assault rifles,[145] killing 28 and wounding 14 civilian passengers, most of whom were women and children.

[148] On May 13, 2006, Ernesto "Smokey" Miranda, a former high-ranking soldier and one of the founders of Mara Salvatrucha, was murdered at his home in El Salvador a few hours after declining to attend a party for a gang member who had just been released from prison.

[156] On June 22, 2008, in San Francisco, California, a 21-year-old MS-13 gang member, Edwin Ramos, shot and killed a father, Anthony Bologna, 48, and his two sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, as they were returning home from a family barbecue.

[161] On November 4, 2009, El Salvadoran leaders of the MS-13 gang allegedly put out a contract on the federal agent responsible for a crackdown on its New York factions, the Daily News learned.

Torres, who belonged to an MS-13 "clique" in Virginia, said he was put in charge, and traveled to New York in August "for the specific purpose of participating in the planning and execution of the murder plot", Sweeney wrote.

On February 1, 2019, 23-year-old Reynaldo "Fuego" Granados-Vasquez, 22-year-old Neris Moreno-Martinez, and 21-year-old Jose "Liar" Melendez-Rivera pleaded guilty to using a fake Facebook account to lure Mejia from New Jersey.

[166][167] On August 13–14, 2017, New Jersey MS-13 faction member Walter Yovany Gomez, who was added to the FBI most wanted list in April 2017,[168] was apprehended and charged with the brutal 2011 murder of his friend, Julio Matute, for associating with another gang.

[182] In August 2017, Kevin Granados-Coreas and Carlos Portillo were charged with the January murder of 19-year-old civilian Julio Cesar Gonzales-Espantzay, who was lured with promises of cannabis and sex to a forest in Long Island, where he was attacked with machetes and stabbed with knives.

Portillo, along with several other of his fellow gang members, lured the four young men into the woods behind a soccer field in Central Islip on April 11, 2017, then proceeded to kill the victims using machetes, knives, and wooden clubs.

[197] In 2005, in Los Angeles, according to a jury in a later sentencing phase, Umaña murdered Jose Herrera and Gustavo Porras on July 27, and participated in and aided and abetted the killing of Andy Abarca on September 28.

[199] On July 15, 2020, during a White House press conference, Attorney General William Barr announced that the Department of Justice had filed terrorism charges against Armando Eliu Melgar Diaz, a Honduran native who moved from the United States back to his home country in 2016.

On March 24, 2014, the investigation culminated with the arrests of 35 Mara Salvatrucha members in the provinces of Alicante, Barcelona, Girona, Madrid and Tarragona in an operation involving approximately 300 officers of the Civil Guard.

MS-13 reportedly had been extracting this fee over numerous people to regulate illicit commerce within the area, as MacArthur Park is a significant source of revenue in the center of the gang's territory.

The victim, Daniela Hernandez, herself a Salvadorean who had immigrated to the city illegally, had struggled to pay the weekly fee of $20 after losing her job as a janitor, and had believed the gang singled her out due to her status as a transgender woman.