Jeff Sessions says he’s going to take down the brutal MS-13 gang 'like Al Capone'

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the Department of Justice’s organized crime task force will destroy the MS-13 gang “just like we took Al Capone off the streets.”

Mr Sessions offered the comparison between the gang and the Prohibition-era mobster during a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Philadelphia, telling law enforcement officials there that he had officially designated the gang as a priority for the crime task force.

“Now they will go after MS-13 with a renewed vigor and a sharpened focus,” Mr Sessions said, referring to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, which brings together a coalition of federal prosecutors from various agencies in government. “I am announcing that I have authorized them to use very lawful tool to investigate MS-13 —not just our drug laws, but everything from [racketeering laws] to our tax laws to our firearms laws.”

“Just like we took Al Capone off the streets with our tax laws, we will use whatever laws we have to get MS-13 off our streets,” he continued.

Since taking office earlier this year, Mr Sessions and President Donald Trump have focused on the MS-13 gang, which has been blamed for gruesome murders around the country. There are around 10,000 members of the gang living in the United States, according to DOJ court filings, and around 40,000 members in Central America.

The violence has been seen places like Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, where the gang has been linked to at least 17 killings in the past two years. Gang activity has also been reported in the Washington, DC, area.

But, the intense focus on MS-13 has been met with criticism from lawyers, civil rights advocates, and even local police leaders. Those critics say that some of the tactics used by investigators discourage undocumented immigrants from cooperating with investigators, or that they amount to racial profiling.

Al Capone was a notorious mobster, who built a multi-million dollar illegal enterprise in the 1920s, which was known for bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling. Capone’s gang was known for burial acts of violence including the infamous St Valentine’s day Massacre in 1929, when he green light the murder of seven of his rivals.

Capone was never indicted on racketeering charges, and was ultimately imprisoned on charges of income tax evasion in 1931.

MS-13 was formed by El Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles nearly 40 years ago. The 10,000 figure repeatedly cited by Mr Sessions has remained relatively stable over the past decade, even though more than 7,000 members of the gang have been arrested since 2005 as a part of “Operation Community Shield.”

Mr Trump claimed earlier this year that his administration had deported about half of all MS-13 gang members in the US, but that claim appears to be misleading. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told The Independent in an email that their agency had rmeoved 2,798 gang members in fiscal year 2017, an increase compared to 2,057 gang members the year prior. That included all gang members, however, not just those from MS-13. That spokesperson said that, through Sept 5, the agency had criminally arrested 450 MS-13 members, and administratively arrested another 215. The spokesperson said that the agency doesn't, however, specifically track deportations by specific gang affiliations, but that they do specifically target MS-13 using a variety of approaches.