The gang members were arrested as part of a joint operation between American and El Salvadorian authorities who tracked members’ activities in part through watching the leader of MS-13 who directs gang operations from a jail cell in the Latin American nation. It hasn’t occurred to anyone to actually stop the man from leading the gang, I guess.

From BreitBart:

US officials on Tuesday cracked-down on the violent MS-13 gang, arresting 26 people for a range of crimes committed in three US states and the Central American nation of El Salvador.

“Early this morning, federal, state, and local law enforcement officials here in North Carolina began executing arrest warrants against 26 alleged members of the gang La Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13,” US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said.

The defendants face a variety of charges stemming from crimes committed between 2003 and June 2008 including four murders, narcotics distribution, robberies, illegal firearms possession, extortion, assault, intimidating witnesses and obstruction of justice, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The arrests followed the unsealing of a 55-count indictment from a federal grand jury in Charlotte, he said.

A gang leader directed many of the activities from his prison cell in El Salvador, where he received money wired by gang members, the statement said.

“Criminal gangs such as MS-13 increasingly recognize no borders, which means that international cooperation is more important today than it ever was before,” Mukasey said, thanking the government of El Salvador for its role in the bust.

The report goes on to mention that almost all the gang members were here illegally and two had been deported once already and re-entered the country illegally. Not that anyone would think a little thing like them not belonging here would matter, certainly not to the four murder victims.