Trump Admin Yanks Another Top MS-13 Gangbanger Off The Streets

Federal law enforcement agents arrested another high-ranking MS-13 member, marking the Trump administration’s latest blow to the international criminal syndicate’s stateside operations.

Joel Vargas-Escobar was arrested Tuesday night in New York, according to an announcement from the Department of Justice (DOJ). A previously deported illegal migrant from El Salvador, Vargas-Escobar had been on the run from U.S. authorities for several years on numerous criminal charges, including a racketeering conspiracy involving 11 different murders.

The major bust follows the administration’s March arrest of another MS-13 leader in northern Virginia, who prosecutors say was in charge of the gang’s East Coast operations.

“The arrest of yet another violent and dangerous MS-13 leader is a major win for our FBI agents, law enforcement partners, and safer American streets,” FBI Director Kash Patel said Wednesday in a prepared statement. “Our agents and analysts are continuously coordinating across multiple field offices and investigating with our valued partners to keep this work going — and we will not stop until that work is done.”

Vargas-Escobar was allegedly a leader of the “Parkview clique,” wielding significant control of the gang’s command structure out of California and Las Vegas, according to the DOJ.

Members of the Parkview clique are charged with committing 11 murders in roughly a year in California and Nevada, according to prosecutors. Many of the group’s victims were allegedly kidnapped, taken to remote locations in the desert and mountains, tortured and ultimately killed. As a leader of the Parkview clique in Las Vegas, he allegedly personally ordered two of the charged murders.