Miami, FL
~ Friday, September 29, 2017
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being here. Over the
last six months and culminating this morning, prosecutors from the United
States, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala filed charges against over 3,800
MS-13 and 18th Street gang members, including essentially every leader of MS-13
in El Salvador. I’ll let Attorneys General Douglas Melendez, Thelma Aldana, and
Oscar Chinchilla discuss their specific results in a moment, but I wanted to
share with you the overall impact of our joint efforts to coordinate against
the gangs which pose a particular threat to the United States.
Today marks the six-month anniversary of the commitment U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his counterparts made at a Ministerial in
Washington, D.C. this past March. Our announcement today concerns Operation
Regional Shield, which is the result of that commitment. Operation Regional
Shield is a direct response to our government’s goals to dismantle
transnational criminal networks and increase international cooperation to prevent
the spread of transnational organized crime to the United States. Increasingly,
transnational organized crime—and its attendant violence—touches U.S
communities, leaving devastation in its wake.
Horrific acts of violence attributable to gangs plague our
communities. As Attorney General
Sessions recently stated, gangs like MS-13 represent one of the gravest threats
to American safety. The Department of Justice is therefore committed to
combatting, disrupting, and dismantling MS-13 through aggressive investigations
and prosecutions, in coordination with our interagency and international
partners.
As part of that effort, U.S. prosecutors have brought
charges in numerous jurisdictions, including traditional MS-13 strongholds such
as Los Angeles, Maryland and New York, as well as new areas into which the gang
has expanded and presents a growing threat, such as Columbus, Ohio. Every U.S.
prosecution has ties to the Northern Triangle, demonstrating the importance of
a regional strategy and coordination between the four countries most affected
by MS-13.
The Justice Department’s regional strategy to combat
transnational organized crime includes an operational component through which
the FBI, the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gangs Section, and other Department
components work in close coordination with the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) to investigate and prosecute gang members. To ensure that transnational
criminals face justice, the Department routinely collaborates with our foreign
counterparts to obtain critical evidence and secure extradition. Finally, our strategy includes a capacity
building component led by our Office of Prosecutorial Development, Assistance,
and Training. Through this office, the Department works with our Central American
counterparts to increase their ability to investigate and prosecute criminal
groups before their criminal activities reach the United States. All of these components are mutually
reinforcing.
The Justice Department currently has five prosecutors deployed
in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, who, together with our DHS partners and
the FBI, focus on gangs, cartels, financial crimes, public corruption, and
other transnational criminal activities.
The work of our personnel in the region has been instrumental in our
regional fight against transnational crime, but these successes against gangs
would not have been possible without the strong partnerships we have with the
Attorneys General with me today. Attorneys General Aldana, Chinchilla, and
Melendez are each incredible allies who have demonstrated time and again their
commitment to the rule of law in their countries. I wish to publicly thank them
here today for their tireless dedication to the security of their countries and
our region as a whole, and I want to reiterate to them, and to you, that they
have in the Department of Justice a strong, willing, and committed partner in
the fight against crime.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment