Jose Abrego-Galdamez, 30, suspected of leading the MS-13 gang, was arrested in Santa Cruz on Thursday, and now faced deportation to El Salvador. MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, may not be one of the largest gangs in Santa Cruz, but it is considered to be one of the most violent. Last Thanksgiving, the gang, which deals in heroin, meth, and marijuana, shot a man 12 times at point blank range at the Santa Cruz levy.
MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by a group of Salvadoran immigrants in the Pico-Union neighborhood. It since spread across the United States and into Canada and Central America, leaving a trail of bloody crimes in its wake. On Christmas Eve 2004, for instance, it stopped an intercity bus in Honduras and opened fire, killing 28 passengers, mostly women and children. The attack was launched as a protest against a government proposal to reinstate the death penalty in that country.
The gang also received attention when the Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez suggested that they were involved in smuggling people into the United States, including Al Qaeda operatives. An FBI investigation later found that there was no basis to this claim.
Abrego-Galdamez has already been deported from the United State three times in the past eight years. Law officials are lauding his arrest as the result of ongoing cooperation between the SCPD and ICE.
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