“We will continue to deport these monsters under the Alien Enemies Act,” US President Donald Trump said on April 9, as he praised the Supreme Court for clearing the way for his administration to go ahead with his crackdown on criminal gang members in the US.
The deportations commenced on March 15, immediately following Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorised the expedited removal of individuals alleged to be affiliated with foreign criminal organisations, specifically targeting members of MS-13 as well as Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang.
Over that weekend, over 250 migrants were deported to El Salvador, including 23 alleged MS-13 members and 238 alleged Tren de Aragua affiliates, as confirmed by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele.
Among those to be deported was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador despite a federal court order barring his removal. Garcia is accused of being an MS-13 member.
But beyond the headlines and campaign speeches, what is MS-13 really? And how did it come to be so deeply entangled with US immigration, foreign policy, and fear?
Civil war roots
Unlike popular perception, MS-13 was not formed in Latin America but in the streets of Los Angeles, starting off as an assembly of Salvadoran immigrants fleeing the country’s civil war.
Its roots trace back to the Salvadoran civil war (1979-1992), a brutal conflict that left over 75,000 dead and displaced roughly a quarter of El Salvador’s population.
At the time, many Salvadorans fled north to the United States, particularly to Los Angeles, seeking refuge from violence and economic collapse.
Among these refugees were former combatants, some of whom had been trained in guerrilla warfare, including the use of military-grade weapons, ambush tactics, and survival under extreme conditions.
When they arrived in Los Angeles, many of these young Salvadorans faced extreme poverty, racism, and a well-established gang culture dominated by Mexican-American gangs.
To protect themselves in hostile neighbourhoods, Salvadoran youth began forming their own groups in what would later become the MS-13.
Over time, their reputation for violence grew. Skills learned in combat such as strategic violence, use of firearms, group organisation, and loyalty under pressure, translated naturally into gang life.
What is MS-13?
MS-13 stands for Mara Salvatrucha — “Mara” meaning gang, and “Salvatrucha” referring to Salvadoran identity. The “13” refers to the gang’s loyalty to the Mexican Mafia, also known as “La Eme”, a reference to the letter “M” in Spanish, which is the 13th letter of the alphabet.
The gang's early members imported the discipline and ruthlessness of their wartime experiences into street-level conflicts.
New recruits are typically “jumped in” through a 13-second group beating — a ritual used to test endurance and commitment.
But the physical rite is only the beginning. Many members go on to tattoo their faces and bodies with gang insignia such as “MS” or “La Mara Salvatrucha,” accompanied by the devil’s horns, or skulls, which brand them as targets to rival gangs and police, and binds them to the gang for life.
A decades-old fight
MS-13 was recognised as a major threat in the 1990s, with the Clinton administration’s immigration reforms sending thousands of these men back to Central America in 1996.
However, rather than weakening the gang, these deportations exported it. In postwar El Salvador, with shattered institutions and little state control, MS-13 grew rapidly, spreading into neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala.
What began as a street gang became a “transnational criminal organisation” and the US recognised it as such in 2012, making it the first street gang to receive such a classification.
Under Executive Order 13581, the US government froze the gang’s financial assets and prohibited US citizens and entities from conducting transactions with its members.
The Alien Enemies Act
US efforts to push MS-13 back reached a new level in 2025, when the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act — a law dating back to 1798 — to ensure the mass deportation of alleged gang members.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident, became the most high-profile case in the crackdown after he was deported to El Salvador, despite a federal court order that had explicitly barred his removal due to credible fears of persecution.
A federal judge has since ordered the government to bring Garcia back, but the administration — while admitting his deportation was an “administrative error” — claims it no longer has the authority to retrieve him.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele also said on April 14 that he would not return Abrego Garcia, likening it to smuggling “a terrorist into the United States”.
Trump has already sent more than 250 migrants to the El Salvador prison, mostly under a centuries-old wartime law that deprives them of due process in exchange for a fee of $6 million paid to El Salvador.
