Original subtitles

♪♪

-One thing you learn when you do these cases

is how truly organized the gangs are.

Anybody in the gang understands they don't have much time.

[ Shouting in unison ]

-It's all-out war. June 2023.

A women's prison in Honduras is in flames.

The prison housed women from

two of the most savage gangs in the world,

MS-13 and their sworn enemies, 18th Street.

With bad blood at a fever pitch between the two gangs,

the prison is a ticking time bomb.

18th Street had been planning to launch a brutal takeover

of the prison and kill female MS-13 gang members.

-The authorities had been receiving warnings

from the prisoners for months,

if not years, that trouble was brewing.

-The female prison was falling apart and ripe for corruption.

-These prisons are not like the state prisons here.

Many of them are older structures.

They're padlocks, bars,

and the guards control the perimeter,

but gang members run the prison on the inside.

-18th Street gang members had overcome the guards

from the prison gate before launching the assault.

Then early in the morning on June 20,

they stormed the prison.

It's an ambush.

-They let themselves out of their cages

and went to the part of the prison

where the MS-13 were housed.

They tried to get in through a bathroom

and found that bathroom blocked by mattresses

that had been stacked against the entrance.

So they set fire to those mattresses

and around a dozen women died

inside that bathroom, burned to death.

-Members of the Barrio 18 gang

opened fire on women in their cells.

Government officials say most of the victims burned to death,

while others had been shot or stabbed.

-Women from Barrio Dieciocho used screwdrivers

and other improvised shivs and knives

to stab women from the MS-13 to death.

They killed some 46 women from the MS-13 gang.

-Police say they recovered 18 pistols and assault rifle

and two grenades.

-1.5 million men and women are incarcerated in Latin America.

Some are the most dangerous gang members of the notorious MS-13,

deported from the US.

For the past three decades,

the two gangs have been battling it out in LA.

-MS-13, compared to 18th Street, they are very, very violent.

MS-13 use machetes as a weapon of choice,

because they are more painful to the victim.

When they cut an arm or leg or ear,

they wanted to make the people suffer.

-They took turns hacking the victim to death with a machete.

-The victim was dismembered,

and one of the defendants allegedly carved out his heart.

-MS-13 is particularly violent.

They like to knife them and cut them.

-Today, MS-13 has over 40,000 members

in at least seven countries globally.

-Tell 'em what gang you. -MS-13.

-And in the last 10 years,

the women of MS-13 have been a rising threat in gangland.

-The female prison population has surged in recent years,

significantly.

-The male-dominated gang is Americanizing

by allowing female members more and more.

-Women are becoming increasingly involved

in gang activity.

-From decoys to killers to masterminds.

♪♪

-Places MS will lead you -- jail,

hospital, or a cemetery.

♪♪

♪♪

-MS-13, also known during that time

as the Mara Salvatrucha Stoners,

starts out at the bottom of the food chain.

-If you want to study MS-13, you don't go to El Salvador.

You go to Los Angeles.

That's where the culture was born.

-MS-13 began as a few immigrant Salvadorian kids

no older than 18, who had escaped war and violence,

hanging out at their 7-11 headquarters.

Most of these kids just wanted to smoke weed

and listen to heavy metal.

Instead of calling themselves a gang,

they were just a group of stoners.

-They started out to be stoners.

They were heavy metal kids with long hair

and looked like rock 'n' roll people

and worshiped Satan.

That's why their hand sign is the horns of the devil.

-Even though these stoners aren't looking for a fight,

the established gangs of LA are.

-And they were confronted

by Mexican American street gangs,

and Mara Salvatrucha 13

formed as a self-defense group

against the other Latino Street gangs.

-"Mara" meaning "gang,"

"Salva" referring to El Salvador,

"trucha" meaning "vigilant," and the number 13

to show allegiance to the Mexican Mafia.

MS-13.

Everything changes when the Olympics come to LA.

-The symbol of the next Olympics

is written on the skyline of the host city.

-Reagan calls for LA to be a safe place,

so leaders of various street gangs,

MS-13's biggest threat to expansion,

are rounded up and sent to jail.

-I have instructed agencies of the federal government

to cooperate fully with Olympic and local officials

to ensure the safety of all participants.

-Law enforcement decided

that they wanted to clear the streets,

and so they rounded up the OGs or veterans

or the older leadership of various street gangs

throughout Southern California.

The problem with this plan

was it was short-sighted and misguided,

because it created a vacuum within the gangs.

-But MS-13 flies under the radar and fills the void.

-MS is constantly trying to maintain its reputation

and increase its reputation,

as well as its numbers and its control over territory and turf

and its criminal enterprise.

And so, during the 1984 Olympics,

the mascot, Sam the Eagle of the Olympics,

they adopted this as the mascot for the gang.

-Sam the Eagle, the Olympic mascot, was still smiling today.

-In 1984, MS-13 had around 2,000 gang members.

In the decade after,

they swelled to 15,000 between the US and El Salvador.

-So the gang is growing in size

and in the number of cliques,

and their criminal activities are increasing,

and the amount of violence is increasing,

partly because they're competing with other gangs.

-As MS-13 grows,

women started to look to the gang for protection.

-Fleeing that violent home situation into the streets,

the gang, for them, was a sense of protection.

Also, the sense of solidarity and socialization

is extremely important for these young women.

-In the context of Central America

and the fact that Honduras is

one of the most hostile countries in the world

for women.

The femicide rates are through the roof,

which are hate-based murders against women.

So when you grow up in what is effectively a war zone

against your gender, you're already primed to hit back.

And women who start at the bottom of the gang,

I think, often have to prove themselves, as do men,

that they're capable of killing rival gang members,

threatening rival gang members,

and establishing dominance through violence.

-Of the country's 300,000 refugees

who have remained inside El Salvador's borders,

at least half are estimated to have fled their villages

in the face of killings by death squads.

-As the gang recruits more refugees from El Salvador,

they start to storm neighborhoods in LA

with fists and knives.

[ Police radio chatter ]

-Rough estimates of the US census in 1980

was approximately 80,000 Salvadorans

in Southern California,

either legal residents or who had been naturalized.

By 1985, that number had mushroomed to about 350,000,

the vast majority of whom were undocumented,

who had come to Los Angeles

to try to flee the violence in their home country.

And the impact that that had on the gang was

the youth who felt disenfranchised

and picked on by others in their community,

they're wanting to join the gang

that represented their nationality, their culture.

-Today, MS-13 and 18th Street are in an all-out war,

but it wasn't always that way.

-In the 1980s, MS and 18th Street got along fine.

They would party together.

They could hang out together.

There was not any major rivalry or beef between the gangs.

-Some say a member of 18th Street

and an MS-13 member known as Scrappy

got into an argument over a girl.

-A fight broke out at a party over a young woman.

Scrappy was an MS-13 gang member,

and he was hitting on the girlfriend

of an 18th Street gang member, and words were exchanged.

A fight broke out. -18th Street is out for blood.

In one account, they returned to the party with an Uzi

and gunned down Scrappy near the intersection

of Normandie Avenue, and MLK Jr. Boulevard.

-There has to be some kind of payment in return.

-In the days after Scrappy's murder,

MS-13 goes on an 18th Street killing spree,

taking out at least four members.

As the years go on,

the list of casualties between the two gangs

gets to the point that no one remembers the body count.

By the 1990s,

the Mara Salvatrucha develops the motto...

- Mata, viola, controla --

kill, rape, control.

-One of the most notable leaders among MS-13 cliques

was Ernesto Deras.

In 1990, he came to LA

as a member of the US trained Salvadorean special forces

receiving political asylum as a former combatant in the war.

He's hailed as Satan himself.

-In the early days of MS, they would practice

these rituals to give offerings to the devil.

Examples of that would be burning a Bible

or capturing a black cat and killing it, cutting it open.

The blood sacrifice was considered

to be a great offering for the Devil.

-Our next step in the fight against crime

is to take on gangs the way we once took on the mob.

-Deras first takes MS-13 from defense to offense.

-MS-13 is like an army.

Like, you have ranks.

In order to go up in that rank, you need to do violent things.

You need to kill people. You need to rape women.

You need to do actions to prove

that you belong firmly to that gang.

-Gang initiators call it a jump-in.

They call it La Gloria Brincada,

or the glorious or holy jump-in.

"Brinca" in Spanish means "to jump. "

If you were knocked down,

there's an expectation that you would get back up and fight.

-For women, there is an option of being sexed into the gang,

where prospecting females have sex with one

or multiple male gang members to gain membership.

-From over 40 homegirls that I interviewed,

all of them told me that they had been jumped into the gang,

and I asked them, why didn't you get sexed in?

And they said,

because you're going to be considered

to be a hood rat, a sexual toy,

and you're not going to have any status whatsoever.

You're not going to have any respect within the gang.

-As the bottom rung of the chain,

women were typically used as lookouts for gang activity.

Though because of this,

they ended up being trusted with high-level information.

-Within the gang,

the expectation is that the females will play

more the role of the caretakers,

the messengers, carrying drugs or guns or messages

from prison or jails to the streets.

-As the violence skyrockets,

mass deportations of gang members cause MS-13

to explode in Latin America and boomerang back to the US.

-This gang was spread by a US policy

of deporting what they called "criminal aliens."

These were MS-13 gang members

who were convicted of crimes in California.

And once they did their time in California State prisons,

they were deported in waves in the 1990s,

back to El Salvador, Guatemala, other places,

and it just spread the gang,

and the gang ultimately boomeranged back

to the East Coast.

-After almost seven years of bloodshed,

Deras has an epiphany and leaves the gang for the Lord.

Though Deras' leadership was short-lived,

his militant creed lives on

a MS-13 becomes one of the most dangerous gangs

in the United States.

-They dropped the "stoner."

Part of that was to indicate

that they were more cholo style, traditional street gang.

It also indicated a change in their MO

and their criminal activities and the amount of violence.

-With military practices in place, MS-13 intensifies.

Toward the end of the '90s and into the 2000s,

the first MS-13 gang members started popping up

on the East Coast.

-Spread like wildfire.

The gang was able to start new cells.

Some of these gang members moved to the East Coast,

places such as Maryland, Long Island, North Carolina.

-The gang that authorities say has infiltrated 33 states,

with hardcore members

organizing drug trafficking, gun running, robberies,

and assassinations.

-The bigger they get, the more attention they draw,

and some women of MS-13 go from lookout to informant.

-Some of these women have turned against the gang

or tried to turn against the gang,

and it's ended up with really tragic consequences.

-One of those informants is Brenda "Smiley" Paz,

a 17-year-old member of MS-13.

-Brenda Paz migrated from Honduras to the United States

in search of the American dream,

and then got caught up in gang life

when she was in the United States.

-She was about 13.

She joined the Normandie clique of MS in Los Angeles.

She had somewhat of a reputation within the gang,

but it was more her affiliation with

some of the heavy hitters within the gang.

-This is, like, the normal one that's M, and that's the S,

13, 13.

-Paz moves around, from Los Angeles to Texas,

and then finally up to Arlington, Virginia,

hanging out with heavy hitters from MS-13.

While in Virginia, she hooks up with another gang leader.

-She and her boyfriend got arrested.

I believe it was for stealing a car.

To avoid jail time,

she decided to become an informant,

and she became an informant for the FBI.

-Being an informant with US law enforcement

is a very unforgivable sin.

If you've found out, then the consequences are deadly.

-So what do I say? -Tell them what gang you.

-MS-13. -What clique?

-Normandie Locos Savatrucha,

the first clique in MS.

-Brenda Paz, an active member of MS-13,

dated hardcore members of MS

and knew a lot about their criminal activities.

She and her boyfriend got arrested,

and in order to avoid jail time,

Brenda decided to become an informant for the FBI,

the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

-Being a snitch

and working with American law enforcement against the gang,

it's a very risky pastime.

-For attackings, I guess, officers and other gang members,

it's very significant.

They take the shirt off,

they always go like that, signifying

that they're going to get into battle, taking your shirts off.

-She became a powerful source of information for the FBI.

As a result of that, she was put in witness protection.

-Paz was a very young immigrant woman.

She felt very isolated and lonely in witness protection

and separated from her "family," which had always been the gang.

And I think eventually,

that loneliness got the better of her,

that eventually led to her demise.

-She decided to call up her former gang members,

and she invited them to her place.

When these gang members arrived,

one of the first questions they asked Brenda was,

"Where have you been?

What have you been doing?"

No matter what story you give them,

if somebody has been gone for a while,

they want to corroborate whatever story

they're being told.

-Sooner or later,

everything always gets handled, that's our motto.

-In their investigation, they found her diary.

And in the diary,

there was a business card from an FBI special agent.

And this was the smoking gun for the MS gang members.

They decided that something had to be done.

-If it takes you 20 years, I'll take you 20 years,

but in that 20 years, hell's gonna break loose.

-She was a teenager,

and she was actually pregnant at the time, and they found out.

They took her to an isolated valley in Northern Virginia,

and she was stabbed repeatedly.

-They stabbed her approximately 13 times.

The brutal murder of a pregnant teenager

thrust the gang into the national spotlight.

-The three dots are "my crazy life."

- La vida loca , as it's known,

"the crazy life,"

is gang members rarely age past the age of 30.

It's a fast and hard life that will end violently or in prison.

-The few places MS will lead you,

jail, the hospital, or a cemetery.

-After the brutal killing, the FBI puts together

the MS-13 National Gang Task Force in 2004.

-I think the Brenda Paz story is important symbolically

because she was a rare example

of high-ranking female leadership in the gang.

-A female who wants to have the status and reputation

of a hard core gang member

not only has to do the same as the guys,

to get the same amount of respect,

a woman needs to do more.

-This is a build out

of a transnational criminal organization.

We should take it seriously,

because these women can be just as vicious,

if not more so, than the men.

-MS-13 put on the women in a mark of destruction.

-In some MS-13 cliques,

women make up almost a third of the members,

much higher than the average number of women in other gangs.

The women of MS-13 have a military mentality,

with no remorse for brutal killing.

-MS-13 has women who are part of the gang,

and they take part in some of the criminal activities

that, you know, the men in the gang

take part in, violent crimes, even.

-The gangs want power.

They won sex, and they won money.

They use the women as honey traps to gain those things.

Christian Villagran Morales was 18 years old.

-Vanessa Alvarado lured him into Malcolm King Park,

promising sex.

-Not far from where Brenda was killed in Virginia,

a female MS-13 associate will carry out violent orders.

Labeled as the MS-13 Vixen,

19-year-old Vanessa Alvarado, isn't a typical honey pot.

-Vanessa Alvarado lured Christian

with the promise of sex.

-Christian Villagran Morales,

a landscaper in the Maryland area,

had thrown up 18th Street gang signs in front of MS-13 members.

-His murder was ordered

because he flashed a rival gang's sign,

bottom line.

Mr. Morales, who was not a gang member.

-Oh, yeah.

Well, I'm not going to use the hand signs, because...

-Due to their army-like mentality,

disrespecting the gang is the number one offense.

MS-13 members bring Alvarado in on the plan to kill Morales.

Not only is she luring him into the woods,

she'll be there for the brutal killing.

Alvarado starts messaging with Morales,

and tells him to meet her at the end of Malcolm King Park

with the promise of sex.

As Alvarado walks deeper into the woods with Morales,

three members of MS-13 are waiting to pounce.

-Mr. Morales knew almost immediately

that his life was going to be taken, and he tried to flee.

-Once in the woods,

the MS-13 gang members brutally stabbed Mars 153 times

as Alvarado cheered them on.

-A judge sentenced a woman to 40 years in prison

for luring a man to his death.

-The victim had stab wounds all over his body,

the worst of them to the back of his head and neck.

-This idea that women don't know how to use violence

or shy away from it is nonsense.

I mean, we've seen women in high-ranking positions

in organized crime across Latin America,

and the gangs are no exception to their ability to adopt

and embrace violence to further their interests.

-The women in MS-13, just get used to violence

because that's how they handle issues.

They said, this is the way it's going to be, and they go to war.

And if somebody is opposing them,

they go after them full force.

-The murder was captured on camera.

-In another territory of MS-13,

a brutal murder is about to go down.

This time, the killer is a woman.

Over the course of the next two months,

the paths of two MS-13 associates

will meet with a bloody end.

15-year-old Damaris Reyes Rivas

and 17-year-old Venus Romero Irheta

Born in El Salvador, they lead parallel lives.

Having been brutalized by gang violence,

they both make the perilous journey in 2014

to reunite with their mothers in the United States.

Little do they know the violence of MS-13

does not stop at the border.

And in America, women are allowed to join the gang.

-For Damaris,

it was a difficult transition, having to go to school

in a new country, in a whole new language,

and her mom was hard-working, trying to provide

not just for her, but for her extended family as well.

-Venus had a very complicated life.

She was raped, abused, and beat in El Salvador.

-El Salvador had a homicide rate

of over 100 per 100,000 individuals,

making it the most violent country in the world.

-Many people leave because of violence.

Once in Maryland,

both Venus and Damaris become associates of MS-13,

Venus through a 21 yea--old rapper named Christian Rivas.

He's also a rising star in MS-13's territory

in the DMV area, slang for the area

where DC, Maryland, and Virginia meet.

Christian goes by the street name "Sombra" or "shadow"

and post his raps on social media and YouTube.

[ Rapping in Spanish ]

-Liking or dating somebody who is a gang member,

you're going to get indoctrinated,

and you're going to wind up in the gang.

That's probably the number one pathway for a female.

-Instead of being a gang victim,

Venus expands her influence in MS-13.

However, Damaris' involvement with the gang

is about to take a turn for the worse.

It's Venus's birthday, and Christian doesn't show up.

-10 days later, on January 12,

police discover a dead body on the banks of the Potomac River.

It's Christian.

Police learned that Christian was attacked

with machetes and killed.

-He had multiple stab wounds to his body,

and he had been in the water for some period of time.

-Venus suspects Damaris.

Loyalty is everything in MS-13.

Without it, there's no control.

-Being the woman of a powerful gang member

makes you powerful by association,

but the life of a gang member is usually hard and fast,

and once your gang member boyfriend is dead,

then your power comes to an end,

and you're also vulnerable from his rivals

and people aspiring to take his place.

-Then, Venus and Damaris are both reported missing.

-We implore the public, please help us find Venus.

And if Venus is listening, please come home.

We're all concerned for your safety.

-A video on Venus's phone

leads police to a grim discovery.

-What was on that phone and on that iCloud

was what broke the case open.

-Even police wouldn't describe what happened.

It was horrific.

-In the DC area,

police are still looking for the killers of Christian Rivas,

and now, looking for his missing girlfriend Venus.

-As of this morning,

she has been upgraded as an endangered missing juvenile.

-Damaris goes missing in December 10, 2016.

The intel suggested through phone information,

her phone went dead and stopped having activity by January 8.

And that's when it was clear

that this was turning from a missing juvenile to a homicide.

-Despite being Venus's boyfriend,

Christian's been cheating on her with Damaris.

-I do believe that Venus found value in the protection

that came with being Christian's girlfriend.

And part of the fear of Christian ever leaving her,

whether it was for Damaris or anyone else was

that she would lose that status.

-The body of Christian Rivas

was found along the Potomac River in Dumfries last month.

Now, six people are in custody, four of them seen here.

In looking for his killers,

detectives discovered a second murder involving a teenage girl.

-There was a search warrant conducted on Venus

on her Apple iCloud account, and what was on that phone

and on that iCloud was what broke the case open.

-On the iCloud,

they find a video of a girl as she's being brutally killed.

It's Damaris.

-Police found her body dumped in the woods.

Her murder was caught on camera and was so vicious,

even police wouldn't describe what happened.

-Brutal killing. It was horrific.

-Investigators believe Reyes went missing in December,

being held against her will,

assaulted, and murdered in early January.

-On February 15,

just three days after Damaris' body is found,

Venus surfaces, not knowing the cops have the tape.

-This exclusive video tonight of a tearful reunion,

a missing 17-year-old girl from Fairfax County is now home safe.

-While her family welcomes her home,

the police are about to arrest her on suspicion for murder.

-She was arrested as soon as news crew left

and taken into custody by police.

-The only thing that I have is what's on that video,

and I know that you know what's on the video.

-"I wanted to know where Christian was."

-Under interrogation, Venus admits

she caught Christian and Damaris together

in the weeks leading up to her murder.

-The next day, Venus gets a call from a friend

of the MS-13 clique.

They know Christian has been killed

before the police even think he's missing.

Venus lost her protection and boyfriend, all in one.

-Venus was part of creating this narrative

that Damaris was involved in Christian's murder,

so that she could get the backing of the gang

and the power of the gang to kill her.

-I don't know that I've ever seen

a more callous description

of someone describing what they did in a murder.

--The video shows 15-year-old Damaris

being led to the woods by other MS-13 members.

-Part of Venus' motivation was this love triangle,

in addition to the gang retribution.

-In the video,

Damaris is brutally beaten within an inch of her life

for her alleged involvement in Christian's death.

-The videos they recorded with the cell phones,

the intention was to show to another high members of the team

how valuable they are.

It's like a medal, right? "Look what I did."

-In Damaris final minutes,

Venus gets her to admit to sleeping with Christian,

and inflicts her final act of revenge.

-This is about if somebody is messing with your boyfriend,

for example,

if somebody is luring your boyfriend to get killed

by other gang members, it is very personal,

and to show other members of my group

that, I deserve respect.

I need to kill this other person.

-Damaris had a tattoo, I believe,

of a $1 sign on her hand,

that Christian had actually tattooed on her,

and Venus skinned it off her hand

while she lay there dying from the stab wounds.

-Was it a lot?

-Venus killed Damaris, stabbing her 13 times,

which is the name of the gang, MS-13.

-And then what did you do?

-I killed her.

-Venus might have done it for love,

but more likely, she did it for power.

Venus was a paro, and as an associate of the gang,

wanting to curry favor with the gang,

carrying out this assassination would give her status,

would be putting in work for the gang,

and she would be considered much more likely

to be a candidate for becoming an actual member of the gang,

as opposed to being just a paro or associate.

-Venus wanted the same thing the men of MS-13 wanted --

power, and she would do whatever it took to keep it.

That meant ending Damaris.

-In the first public case,

a woman in MS-13 had gotten the green light

from higher-ups to kill.

-It is relatively rare for a young woman within MS-13

to carry out a green light or assassination

on a fellow gang member.

-One of the things that astonishes me

and really saddens me and scares me is

to see this almost lack of appreciation for life.

Violence is kind of seen as a normal thing.

-MS-13 is able to still grow due to their ability

to keep people in check.

-The gang was expanding.

The gang started getting more into entrepreneurial activities,

taxing a neighborhood,

business extortion, robbery, petty theft.

-Between 2012-2017 one study found that MS-13

was suspected of carrying out over 200 murders

in the United States alone.

-MS-13,

their numbers are increasing in our area,

and so is the violence.

-MS-13, they're the boogeyman of immigration and gangs.

They are involved in a lot of violence,

sometimes heinous.

-A gruesome slaying of four boys in Long Island

Is about to put a woman by the name of Diablita on the map.

-The body was just a bunch of flesh and bones.

-On social media, she went by the name "Diablita,"

Spanish for "little devil,

and that's how prosecutors allege Leniz Escobar acted.

-Women of MS-13 are moving up the ranks from bait to killers.

-She's called "la diablita," "the little devil,"

and she's on trial in Suffolk County

for leading these young men to their brutal deaths.

-Four months after Christian's murder,

a female member of MS-13 is about to shed blood

in a New York City suburb.

18-year-old Jorge Tigre, who also goes by George,

is missing, and so are four other boys.

MS-13 targets Jorge Tigre

after he's caught throwing up gang signs.

The bodies of the missing boys, Jorge Tigre,

Michael Lopez Banegas, Jefferson Villalobos,

and Justin Llivicura

are found in the woods of a Long Island Park.

However, one still remains unaccounted for.

-One of the things that we use to help combat crimes

that are in our community

is monitoring phone calls in our jails.

Any time there is a crime in our community,

someone in our jail is talking about it.

-Listening to jailhouse calls

leads police to their prime suspect, Leniz Escobar,

who calls her incarcerated boyfriend after the murders.

-When she describes taking the train,

that is coded language for, they were murdered,

but that one got away,

and she is concerned about the one that got away.

Leniz Escobar lured the four victims back to this area

on the ruse that they were going to hang out,

maybe smoke marijuana together.

The members of MS-13 then started to

viciously hack the four victims up.

-One managed to escape,

and became the government's star witness.

-Guilty verdict on all counts.

That's what a jury returned today.

-Prosecutors told press after the trial

that Long Island's little devil even licked the blood

off her lips after one of the victims had reached for her

and gotten his blood on her shirt and face.

The massacre in the woods is so horrific,

it grabs national headlines.

-Vicious killing of four young men

in the Central Islip Park in April.

-And three months later,

President Trump seizes on an opportunity to condemn MS-13

during a fiery speech he gives on Long Island.

-Few communities has suffered worse at the hands

of these MS-13 thugs than the people of Long Island.

It is the policy of this administration

to dismantle, decimate and eradicate MS-13.

-Crackdown against a butcher's gang known

as MS-13 on Long Island.

-A lot of judges look at the person in front of them

and they see a young female and they think,

"Oh, she's harmless," which is a little questionable.

-Women in MS-13 have increasingly shown

how ruthless they can be.

No remorse, just business.

-Esmeralda Flores Acosta was a single, divorced mom

of two children who used to work as a hairdresser,

and then created one of the most elaborate

human trafficking schemes,

allied with MS-13 in El Salvador.

-By working with a dangerous MS-13 leader,

Flores Acosta was able to conduct

one of the first human trafficking cases of its kind.

Flores Acosta took victims into her web

and had them marry men for their life insurance,

emblazoning them as black widows.

-Esmeralda Flores Acosta was called the Black Widow

by the press because of creating arranged marriages

and then having the husbands murdered by the MS-13,

and then claim their life insurance payments.

She operated for a few years. She had three victims,

one of which stood out, which was a woman called Monica.

Monica was offered work by Esmeralda

as a domestic nanny and cleaner.

-One day, when Monica was working,

she had seen another woman in the house

that had bruises down her back seemingly from Flores Acosta.

-I've seen women who are running crews,

who are financial leaders

in the drug or the human trafficking business.

And that's another hard to believe thing.

How could women be involved

in human trafficking of other women?

But they are.

-When Monica got scared and tried to leave,

Esmeralda lured her into a meeting

with her MS-13 boyfriend, Wilbur.

Monica recounts that event in quite a lot of detail

in the court documents.

Esmeralda took her to a house,

and as she walked past the window to the house,

she looked inside, and she could see this guy inside

who was tall and muscular,

and his entire body was covered with tattoos.

And the only part of his body

that doesn't have any tattoos on it are his hands.

So, when Esmeralda took her into that house,

Wilber put a gun to Monica's head

and told her that she would do exactly as she was told

and that she wasn't going home.

-According to court documents from Monica's marriage,

Flores Acosta made more than $60,000

after claiming the life insurance from the man

Monica was forced to marry.

-The scheme that she created was considered by the state

a form of human trafficking,

the first of its kind ever seen in El Salvador.

It was a really elaborate scheme run by a woman

who sort of created this

criminal matriarchy around herself.

It was much more sophisticated than the kind of things

we often see carried out by the gangs.

It was very entrepreneurial.

She was outsourcing the sort of

most brutal part of the scheme to the MS-13.

-Monica was able to flee to the police station

and report the trafficking ring the Black Widow was leading.

Flores Acosta was arrested in 2017,

and then sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

The Black Widow is just the tip of the iceberg

of what women in MS-13 are capable of.

-She also admitted to setting up two different murders.

-Wanted murder suspect.

-She was allegedly in the midst of plotting a third murder.

-I think they're getting more and more organized

as we speak and closing in the ranks.

-All of those crimes in hopes of advancing her career

in the brutal MS-13 gang.

-MS-13 is the first street gang

to be designated

as a transnational criminal organization by the US Treasury.

Their numbers only continue to grow,

along with the number of women

that are joining the gang,

carrying out MS-13's bloody legacy.

-Women are underestimated within MS-13,

but not for the reasons that most people would think.

They're underestimated because they play a central

and important role within the gang

that enable the gang to function and to operate and survive.