ICE
Arrests 375 Gang Members, Operation Community Shield Nets
2,388 Gang Arrests in First Year
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Gang members being arrested by ICE.
ICE Photo |
WASHINGTON,
D.C. (ICE) — During a two-week enforcement action that
culminated this month, federal agents from the Department
of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) arrested 375 gang members and associates
in 23 states
in a joint effort with law enforcement agencies nationwide.
The
arrests are the latest under the auspices of “Operation Community
Shield,” a comprehensive initiative launched by ICE roughly
one year ago to disrupt and dismantle transnational, violent
street gangs. Operation Community Shield represents the first
time the federal government has used immigration and customs
authorities in a combined, national campaign against criminal
street gangs in the United States.
Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the results
at a press conference with ICE Assistant Secretary Julie
Myers; Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(USCIS) Emilio Gonzalez; Assistant Director of Field Operations
at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF) Michael Bouchard, First Assistant Chief of the Dallas
Police Department David O’Neal Brown, and Deputy Assistant
Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division
Deborah Pierce.
In the past
year, ICE has conducted several targeted enforcement actions under
Operation Community Shield, including the latest one. In total,
these efforts have resulted in the arrest of 2,388 members of 239
different gangs and the seizure of 117 firearms. Fifty-one of those
arrested were gang leaders. Roughly 922 of those arrested were
from the street gang Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). Those arrested under
Operation Community Shield are prosecuted criminally or removed
from the United States through immigration proceedings. To date,
533 have been charged criminally, while 1,855 have been hit with
administrative immigration charges.
In the latest
enforcement action that began on Feb. 24, 2006, ICE teamed
up with its law enforcement partners to arrest large numbers
of gang members in Dallas (44), San Diego (41), Washington,
D.C. (22), Miami (22), and Raleigh, N.C. (19). Gang members
were also arrested in locations such as Sioux Falls, South
Dakota; Des Moines, Iowa; and Springfield, Missouri. Those
arrested included members of MS-13, Surenos, 18th Street Gang,
Latin Kings, Bloods, Crips, Armenian Power, Street Thug Criminals,
Brown Pride, Asian Dragon Family, Avenue Assassins, Spanish
Gangster Disciples, Big Time Killers and Hermanos Pistoleros
Latinos.
More than
260 of the 375 individuals arrested in the latest action have
past criminal records, most of them violent. ICE agents arrested
73 of the individuals on new criminal charges ranging from
drug and firearms violations to charges of re-entering the
country after deportation. The rest have been accused of administrative
immigration violations and placed into deportation proceedings.
Some of those arrested include:
Convicted
murderer & gang member whose son is charged with shooting
an ICE agent — On March 3, ICE agents in South Texas arrested
Juan Eladio Villareal-Saenza, a convicted murderer and member
of the gang, Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos, on criminal charges
of re-entry after deportation. The same day, ICE agents and
U.S. Marshals deputies arrested his son, Leobardo Villareal,
who was wanted on federal charges of shooting ICE agent Maria
Ochoa in May 2005; escaping from federal custody; and federal
drug violations. After his first arrest for the attempted murder
of an ICE agent, Leobardo Villareal escaped in Sept. 2005 from
the McAllen Medical Center, where he allegedly carjacked a
mother and her children to flee. He was later featured on “America’s
Most Wanted.”
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Photo
of Jose Carlos Peralta-Morales, a Surenos gang member
who robbed a state representative & beat an individual
in the head with a bat.
ICE
Photo
|
Gang member
who robbed state representative & beat individual in the head
with bat – On Feb. 28, ICE agents worked with the Fuquay-Varina,
N.C. Police Department to arrest Jose Carlos Peralta-Morales, a
Surenos gang member who was observed that day beating an individual
in the head with an aluminum baseball bat in a Wal-Mart store.
ICE interviews of the suspect revealed that he had previously been
deported in May 2005 and had been convicted of robbery / accessory
after the fact in connection with an incident in which gang members
broke into and robbed the house of a North Carolina state representative.
Peralta-Morales faces federal criminal prosecution.
“The
lawlessness that these violent gangs propagate presents a grave
threat to public safety,” said Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff. “We are meeting their victimization
of the innocent with hard-hitting enforcement actions that
lead to criminal prosecutions and deportations. Operation
Community Shield embodies the power behind law enforcement
partnerships,
at all levels, to share information and combat these intolerable
criminal elements.”
“Transnational
street gangs pose a growing public safety threat to urban and
rural communities throughout the United States. Their violence,
sophistication, and scope have reached intolerable levels,” said
ICE Assistant Secretary Myers. “Operation Community Shield
demonstrates how ICE is working with its law enforcement partners
and leveraging its broad authorities to disrupt these criminal
organizations on a national scale.”
Partnerships
with law enforcement / Impact on violent crime:
Law enforcement
partnerships at the local level are critical to the success
of Operation Community Shield. Recent collaboration in Dallas
was representative of joint operations nationwide. In Dallas,
ICE received data from the Dallas Police Department about local
violent gang members. ICE conducted further investigation to
determine if any were subject to arrest for federal customs
or immigration violations. After identifying targets subject
to ICE authorities, ICE and Dallas police conducted a joint
operation that netted 44 gang members.
First Assistant
Chief of the Dallas Police Department David O’Neal Brown
said, “Operation Community Shield has had a direct impact
on violent crime in the Dallas area. Over the past year, the
murder rate in the Dallas metropolitan area decreased roughly
twenty percent compared to the year before. This is a successful
program that the Dallas Police Department is proud to participate
in.”
ICE has also
worked with its partners at the federal level. In the recent
action, ICE teamed with USCIS to identify 48 MS-13 members
who had recently applied for immigration benefits by comparing
its list of thousands of gang targets against the USCIS database
of immigration benefit applicants. This effort led to the arrest
of 4 MS-13 members and the placement of immigration detainers
on 8 MS-13 members in custody.
“Operation
Community Shield is a prime example of how USCIS and ICE have
joined forces to identify and remove those who pose a threat
to public safety,” said USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez. “Just
this past year, USCIS identified and referred more than 4,000
cases involving fraud to ICE. This joint anti-fraud and national
security effort is a major priority for the Department of Homeland
Security.”
ICE has also
worked closely with its partners at the ATF and FBI. ICE has
been coordinating street gang operations with the ATF’s
Violent Crime Impact Team (VCIT) initiative, which operates
in 23 cities throughout the country to identify, arrest, and
prosecute the most violent criminals in communities. The VCIT
is especially focused on the reduction of gun-related violence
often perpetrated by violent gangs. ICE has also been coordinating
all its gang targets with the FBI and its MS-13 National Gang
Task Force prior to arrest.
About Operation
Community Shield:
Operation
Community Shield was launched in February 2005 after a threat
assessment by ICE field offices identified MS-13 as one of
the largest and most violent street gangs in the country. The
assessment found that most of these gang members were foreign-born;
in the United States illegally; had prior criminal convictions;
and/or were involved in crimes that made them subject to ICE’s
broad immigration and customs authorities.
ICE kicked
off Operation Community Shield with an enforcement action that
resulted in the arrest of more than 100 members of MS-13. In
the months that followed, ICE agents nationwide joined ranks
and continued targeting MS-13 members in their jurisdictions.
In May 2005, ICE expanded Operation Community Shield to include
all criminal street gangs and prison gangs with foreign-born
members.
Since that
time, ICE has been targeting all violent gang members nationwide
by using its administrative immigration authorities to detain
and remove illegal alien gang members from the country and
by using its criminal authorities to arrest and prosecute gang
members involved in criminal activities.