DHS Knew MS-13 Ordered Hits But Did Not Tell Agents

The Department of Homeland Security endangered the lives of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents by waiting months to alert them of a notoriously violent Salvadoran gang’s plots to murder the agents and their families.

The daunting information was brought to  Judicial Watch by outraged Homeland Security sources that provided the written memo warning ICE agents in the U.S. that Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) had specific plans to kill agents and their families in Virginia and Maryland.  Janet Napolitano’s agency sat on the intelligence for two months while federal agents risked their lives not knowing about the MS-13 ordered hits.

I have confirmed with HSI sources that as early as March the FBI obtained reliable information that a high-ranking MS-13 gang banger in El Salvador ordered the hit on ICE/HSI agents and their family members. The FBI informant also said that MS-13 members who killed any ICE agent in Maryland or northern Virginia would get a $50,000 reward.

For unknown reasons, Homeland Security officials sat on the information until this week while unsuspecting agents performed their duties. Distributed as an internal “Officer Safety Advisory,” the alert says that the agency is forwarding the information for “rapid awareness to the threat specificity and the current elevated concern regarding drug cartel violence against US law enforcement personnel.”

In November 2009, El Salvadoran leaders of the MS-13 gang put out a contract on an ICE/HSI  special agent responsible for a crackdown in New York City. 

That brazen plot to assassinate an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was revealed in an arrest warrant for reputed gang member Walter (Duke) Torres.  Torres tipped authorities to the plan after he and four other MS-13 members were arrested by NYPD detectives in Queens.

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.  Gang members were trying to get their hands on a high-powered assault rifle, like an M-16. to penetrate the agent’s bulletproof vest.

Another MS-13 informant told authorities the ICE/HSI agent was marked for death because the gang was “exceedingly angry” at him for arresting many members in the past three years.

The MS-13 is a feared street gang of mostly illegal immigrants that’s spread throughout the U.S. and perpetrates violence to intimidate rival gangs, law enforcement and the general public, according to the FBI. In 2008 three atrocious MS-13 crimes received worldwide media attention.

In San Francisco an MS-13 gang banger murdered a father and son with an assault weapon because their car blocked his from making a turn. In Los Angeles an MS-13 member just released from prison murdered a high school football star as the teen jock walked home from the mall. In Maryland a 14-year-old honors high school student was shot to death on a crowded public bus by an illegal alien who proudly revealed he belonged to the MS-13.

A few years ago the Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC) published a report that said criminal street gangs like the MS-13 are responsible for the majority of violent crimes in the U.S. and are the primary distributors of most illicit drugs.

How could Homeland Security officials wait to inform their own agents about specific death threats from this established criminal enterprise, knowing a similar MS-13 hit had been ordered in 2009?  Was it another cluster muck in the long line of federal law enforcement bureaucratic blunders lately or a deliberate decision made high up in the Obamanation that kept officials from issuing the safety alert in a more timely manner?