A Leader of the MS-13 gang was captured at the border with Mexico in California.
Freddy Ivan Jandres-Parada has avoided arrest since Dec. 2020 when he was indicted with over a dozen fellow gang members in the Eastern District of New York on terrorism charges. FBI agents arrested him at the border on March 7th, and he waived his right to bail the next day.
The 48-year-old is from El Salvador, and goes by the nickname “Lucky de Park View.” He is being held at the federal jail in San Diego, and is pending transfer to federal custody in New York to await trial.
Jandres-Parada had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, with a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
“He is alleged to be among the most senior leaders of MS-13 worldwide,” the FBI wrote on its website. “Jandres-Parada has been charged with several terrorism offenses for his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians, law enforcement, and rival gang members, as well as drug distribution and extortion schemes worldwide.”
All 14 suspected MS-13 members — 11 of whom have been in custody for years, are facing federal counts for conspiracy to provide and conceal material support to terrorists and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, according to the indictment.
Federal prosecutors allege the group ran “military-style training camps; obtained weapons, handguns, rifles, grenades, improvised explosive devices and rocket launchers,” and also “directed acts of violence and murder in El Salvador, the United States and elsewhere.”
The criminal “board of directors” governed the gang’s activities around the world and issued “green lights” to kill rival gangs, and law enforcement.
MS-13, also known as “La Mara Salvatrucha,” grew out of a Los Angeles street gang that was formed by Central American immigrants in the 1980s, and metastasized into one of the nation’s most violent criminal syndicates, tied to a slew of savage machete slaughters, including on Long Island.
At least a dozen suspected MS-13 members were indicted in 2017 in connection with seven murders, including the bloody killings and mutilations of three Brentwood high school students in 2016.
