Original subtitles

Gangs rule their territories through ruthless enterprises, fear, and a strict code.

Deviate from this code, or challenge their power, and retribution soon follows.

Especially for the notorious street gang, MS-13.

From its humble roots in the barrios of LA to its transformation

into the most dangerous street gang in the Western Hemisphere,

here are three stories from inside MS-13's brutal world.

First, MS-13 attempts a violent takeover of the United States.

But there's a mole in their ranks.

He's probably the best source I've ever operated in

21 and a half years as a special agent in the FBI.

Then, MS-13 kills a former member hiding in the Witness Protection Program.

If you rat, you die.

And finally, the gang goes head-to-head with a federal

task force determined to end their reign of terror.

We declared war on MS-13.

These are the stories from inside MS-13. This

is Gangland Chronicles. 1970s, Los Angeles.

This is the birthplace of what will become one

of the world's most dangerous gangs, MS-13.

Starting as a social group for Salvadorian teenagers

who recently immigrated from war-torn El Salvador,

They initially call themselves Mara Salvatrucha Stoners,

which means Tough Street Gang, or MSS for short.

They were kids that liked to listen to heavy metal music and smoke weed,

who were kind of protecting themselves against other people in the neighborhood.

But once gang members spend time in LA County jails and California state prisons,

MSS turns from a small neighborhood gang into something more menacing.

MS-13 is the most violent street gang I've ever investigated,

and they make their money by extorting businesses.

It can be bodegas, cab drivers, bus drivers.

They sell drugs.

In prison, the gang also finds an ally in one fearsome group,

and they change their name to MS-13.

13 is the 13th letter in the alphabet, which is the letter M for the Mexican Mafia.

The newly formed MS-13 quickly becomes known for

their brutality and their weapon of choice, the machete.

The damage that the machete does is just, it's horrific.

If we deal with gang members who engaged in

so many homicides, they would lose count.

In 1992, the civil war in El Salvador ends,

and MS-13 leaders are deported back to the country,

where they set up the gang and take it to new levels of brutality.

El Salvador didn't have an MS-13 problem until we deported these members back there.

MS-13 spreads like wildfire across El Salvador and Central America.

By the early 2000s, there's an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 new members.

And the leadership now is taking place in El Salvador.

They're becoming extremely organized and becoming even more violent than before.

Having conquered Central America,

the leadership is now intent on dominating the U.S.,

But they don't see what's coming next.

MS-13 has spread all over the US, but lacks real organization.

Neighborhood groups known as cliques operate

independently and often against one another.

MS-13 got this bad reputation of infighting.

Leadership in El Salvador knows there's more money to

be made if they can reorganize MS-13 in the U.S.,

especially on the East Coast.

MS-13 wants to have more control, almost like the Mafia.

They force cliques in Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey,

New York, and Massachusetts to come together into

an organized unit known as the East Coast Program.

Its chosen stateside leader is Jose Adan Martinez Castro, a.k.a.

Chucky.

But not all the cliques are falling in line with the program.

They weren't following instructions. They didn't want to join the program.

And the leaders in El Salvador want people killed if they're not

following the rules and not joining the East Coast program.

The Salvadorian bosses direct Chucky to call a meeting to fix the problem.

But nobody is prepared for who's listening in.

December 13, 2015, Richmond, Virginia.

Head of MS-13's East Coast operations, Jose Adan Martinez Castro, aka Chucky,

calls an emergency meeting with senior members after several cliques

refused to join MS-13's reorganization efforts in the region.

During the meeting, Chucky told these members,

we have to remove those leaders to get everyone in line

with our idea of MS-13 and how they should operate.

Chucky asks a member from Boston to take out his boss.

Chucky asks him, why haven't you killed your leader yet?

He's not getting with the program. He's not following our instructions.

He should be removed. He should be killed.

You and another member should become the leaders of the clique.

But Chucky is unaware of one important detail.

The member from Boston is an informant, and he's wearing a wire.

He's probably the best source I've ever operated in

21 and a half years as a special agent in the FBI.

The informant, a former drug dealer,

has infiltrated a Boston MS-13 clique for over two years in

exchange for getting him and his family out of El Salvador.

But this is his most dangerous meeting yet.

He's going in where I can't watch or see him,

where I could hear a code word saying, I'm in trouble, I need help.

When you go to these meetings, they check for phones, and if you have a phone,

they make you turn it off, they take the battery out, they put it off to the side,

because they don't want anyone to be able to record these meetings.

And if they found out that he was an informant, they would've killed him,

and I would've never known.

But the informant is able to record the entire meeting without being caught.

He provides the FBI with evidence they've been struggling to get on MS-13 for years.

It showed not only the organization,

but the level of violence that they're willing to

commit in order to run this criminal enterprise.

Chuckie and the senior leaders are arrested.

Chuckie pleads guilty and goes to prison for 20 years for conspiracy.

It was a huge success.

It disrupted MS-13 in the East Coast, and it affected El Salvador.

MS-13 has suffered a serious setback,

but leadership is not backing down on carrying out their brutal expansion plans.

No threat will go unpunished.

2002, Arlington, Virginia.

Police arrest MS-13 member Brenda Smiley-Paz and her boyfriend, Dennis Rivera,

while trying to steal a car.

Police figure out that Rivera is a suspected MS-13

hitman and send him to jail on murder charges.

Sixteen-year-old Brenda lands in juvenile detention,

and authorities discover her ties to a notorious MS-13 clique run deep.

Her status within the gang was based on her romantic

relationship with two different very,

very senior, very, very violent members of MS-13 at different times.

And Brenda could be charged as an accessory to their many crimes.

And even as a juvenile, she could get significant time

and really serve the best years of her life in prison.

But if Brenda tells authorities what she knows, her life is on the line.

The gang killed their own faster than any gang I've ever seen.

If you're caught or suspected of talking to

the police or cooperating with the police, they'll kill you.

Brenda Paz has an impossible choice to make.

Risk betraying the gang or spend the rest of her days behind bars.

2002, Arlington, Virginia.

MS-13 member Brenda Paz has a choice.

Work with police, or land a long prison sentence as an accessory to several crimes.

She's got the offer of help from police officers and prosecutors.

And smartly, she took it.

Brenda agrees to become an informant and gives

law enforcement important details of brutal, unsolved murders.

Brenda helped to solve a lot of murders here in the DC area and elsewhere

in the country where she'd been with these other various MS-13 members.

Now that she's spilled the gang's secrets to authorities,

Brenda is no longer safe in Virginia.

In 2003, the now pregnant teen enters witness protection and relocates to Minnesota.

She wasn't happy. She wanted to get out of it. She missed the culture,

the lifestyle, her friends.

Brenda takes a huge risk and breaks witness protection rules.

She called her fellow gang members in Virginia and said, hey, I'm up here.

Why don't you come up and we can party?

And so they did.

Brenda lies and tells them a relative is paying for her new apartment,

but some grow suspicious.

One of the gang members found her journal in which

she had described her meetings with FBI officials,

and reportedly, there was a business card for one of these FBI special agents.

And so, of course, this was the smoking gun.

It doesn't take much for the gang members to convince Brenda

that she's better off back in Virginia with them.

Once there, her clique holds a secret meeting.

And at that meeting, it was unanimously decided that she had to be taken out.

And MS-13 gang members hatch the perfect plan.

They will take Brenda fishing.

July 13, 2003, Shenandoah County.

They parked the car on the parking area on the one side.

They got the fishing rods out.

And she was several months pregnant at this point.

And they walked across the bridge.

They helped her down the hillside to the river's edge where there's a trail.

They stabbed her to death right there.

It was to set the example that anybody that rats out on this gang,

this is what's going to happen to you.

Two of Brenda Paz's attackers are later caught and sentenced to life in prison.

A third suspect is acquitted.

Consistently thwarted by informants,

MS-13 isn't scrapping their plans for expansion.

Their biggest invasion is yet to come.

And law enforcement is up to the challenge.

2016, Suffolk County, Long Island.

It's considered one of the safest places in the country until MS-13 invades.

MS-13 in Suffolk County Was solely responsible for a 28 homicides.

With the murder rate tripled, the normally tranquil county is gripped with fear,

and MS-13 is on the offensive,

recruiting innocent immigrant children to fill their ranks and

attempting to move massive amounts of drugs into the community.

There was a clique that was moving kilos of heroin and cocaine.

When you have a clique that has the capacity and

the network capable of distributing kilos,

that's a red flag for us.

Suffolk County draws a line in the sand.

We declared war on MS-13.

But will it be enough to take out one of the most violent street gangs in history?

2016, Suffolk County, Long Island.

The authorities have declared war against MS-13,

which has taken a stranglehold on this once sleepy community.

Law enforcement floods known MS-13 hangouts and turf with police officers on foot,

in patrol vehicles, and in the air.

If we determined that someone was going to do a violent crime, we had to stop that.

The police tactic also prevents murders before they can be carried out.

We had a patrol in the area,

and they actually saw an attempted abduction involving

MS-13 gang members in a van in the area of the school.

And in that van, they discovered duct tape and other weapons

that were clearly going to be used in this crime.

Just as quickly as authorities can arrest MS-13 members,

the gang puts fresh recruits onto the streets.

But the authorities have something MS-13 does not.

A wiretap.

We conducted one of the largest wiretap investigations of a gang that I'm aware of.

It involved over 200 communication devices.

By intercepting MS-13 communications,

authorities are able to stay one step ahead of the gang.

When law enforcement gets involved in major operations to disrupt a gang like MS-13,

it really makes it almost impossible for them to do business in the area.

If they're being watched, they're being surveilled, they can't function.

After two years of recording over 200 different MS-13 phones on wiretap,

Long Island authorities are able to deal their final blow.

December 19th, 2019.

The largest MS-13 bust in history goes down.

Hundreds of agents, police officers, go out at 5 o'clock in the morning, get ready,

and at 6 a.m., execute, execute, execute.

And these law enforcement teams start banging down doors,

Law enforcement hits hard and fast,

resulting in nearly 96 arrests in Long Island and hundreds worldwide.

We decimated those cliques in Long Island.

There were nine cliques up and down the eastern seaboard. We took them out as well.

We identified many, many leaders in El Salvador that we pursued.

They were arrested as well.

The 150-page indictment against the 96 Long Island MS-13

members includes seven murder plots,

as well as gun running and drug trafficking charges.

After we took down MS-13 we saw a sharp decrease in the number

of homicides throughout Long Island related to MS-13.

But despite many MS-13 members on Long Island sent to prison,

authorities fear they will return to the area.

Being the most violent gang that we've seen in recent times really calls for us as

a nation and for us in law enforcement to pursue them no matter where they are.

MS-13 will remain a potential threat,

as long as the gang is intent on upholding its vicious reputation.

Today, membership of the gang is approximately 10,000 in the US.

They're constantly recruiting because they

want to replace the numbers who are winding

up in prison or who have left the country or who are killed in the line of fire.

And so there's a constant need to replenish the membership.

MS-13 will continue to morph,

so we have to stay on our toes to keep them from

reconstituting and reestablishing their presence.