Sheriff: MS-13 Gang Brings Machetes, Rape, Scalping to Texas

Members of the hyper-violent MS-13 transnational criminal gang are bringing severe tactics like machete-hacking murders, rape, and scalping to Texas according to the Texas Sheriff’s Association.

Jackson County Sheriff Andy Louderback, who also serves on the Texas Sheriff’s Association, told Breitbart Texas on Monday that the MS-13 gang members are bringing a level of violence not seen before by gangs in the U.S.

“They have distinguished themselves as to the level of violence by committing heinous acts including hacking people to death with a machete, scalping, and raping young girls,” the sheriff said. “They are a Tier 1 threat in Texas.”

Louderback recently spoke on a teleconference panel hosted by Jessica Vaughn with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). During that conference, Louderback discussed the impact in Texas these gangs are presenting and how the flood of unaccompanied alien chidren across our southern border is leading to a massive increase in the numbers of MS-13 gang members in Texas and across the U.S.

“We are inexperienced in seeing the level of brutality, savagery that MS-13 is doing here in Texas,” the south Texas sheriff told the listeners. “There are many cases in the Houston area. And out of 20,000 gang members in Houston, about 800 of them are MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha.”

“But the violence that they commit in Houston, Harris County, is unbelievable,” he continued. “And most of our citizens are unprepared and don’t have the knowledge on what’s actually going on with these gang members here in the state of Texas. And having the border here in Texas affords us a unique look into exactly what’s happening to our country, which appears first most of the time here in Texas.”

“We have multiple deportees using machetes, scalping, killing 14-year-olds, 23-year-old gang leaders, you know, luring, you know, kids into a road near Addicks Dam and using a machete, it was four of them, to hack a person to death – a 14-year-old boy, who allegedly would not murder his cousin, that they were upset about over some issue,” Louderback stated.

He is referring to the case recently concluded in Houston where Breitbart Texas reported a MS-13 gang leader was convicted of murdering a 14-year-old boy with a machete. Jose Granados-Guevara, 23, was convicted by state district court Judge Terry Mlenniken following a three-day bench trial. The judge sentenced Granados-Guevara to spend 99 years in a state prison.

The victim, Jose Meraz, was taken by Granados-Guevara and three other gang members to a wooded area in the west part of Houston near Addicks Dam Road on September 15, 2014. The MS-13 gang members passed the machete around as they killed the boy. Meraz was sentenced to death by Granados-Guevara after he refused to kill his own cousin as part of a gang ritual, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Louderback continued, talking about a case reported last week by Breitbart Texas where a MS-13 gang member who had previously been deported posed as a music producer with another gang member to lure a 15-year-old girl to Houston where she was repeatedly raped by the two men according to Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman.

“We have a 15-year-old girl out of Henderson, Texas who was lured on a social media app, K-I-K or Kik, and also MeetMe.com as MS-13 members that were posing as music talent searchers and talent, able to put her in front of certain folks to enhance her talent,” Louderback said describing the violent assault. “[They] took her captive, sexually assaulted her for two days before she was able to get free, get a cellphone, get a hold of 9-1-1. Again, a two-time deportee, MS-13 members. That’s what we’re faced with, folks.”

“We need help. We need help from the federal government,” Sheriff Louderback pleaded. He continued:

The state government’s actively involved. You know, hat’s off to them for what they’re doing. But the federal government plays a role here. And our interaction with law enforcement and federal policies that are in place now are reprehensible. They affect law enforcement. They affect our citizens. They affect our taxpayers. And it’s not a good situation, by any stretch. And, you know, my vocabulary, I get pretty passionate about this because, you know, Texas sheriffs and Texas law enforcement, you know, our citizens are important to us, as probably in all states. But it’s a unique situation here in Texas.

It is not just a Texas problem. Jessica Vaughn wrote for CIS that the problem effects cities all across the United States. “The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Baltimore, Long Island, Charlotte, Newark, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, and several Texas cities suffer the highest level of MS-13 violence, as shown by ICE arrests,” Vaugh stated. “Brentwood, N.Y., on Long Island, a town consumed by MS-13 crime, exemplifies the association between the huge influx of illegal alien minors and MS-13 violence levels. In a town of 60,000, there have been 30 MS-13 murders since 2010; an additional three murders this fall, plus two bodies found from the spring are being attributed to the dangerous gang.”

Vaughn attributed the growing problem to the exploitation of existing law designed to deter human trafficking that now allows these unaccompanied minors unbridled access to American cities. She wrote:

The increasing MS-13 population and violence results in part from Congress passing the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which was intended to protect against the trafficking of unaccompanied minors. But the Obama administration has misused the law and allowed in tens of thousands of illegal alien teenagers who are neither unaccompanied nor trafficked. Over last three years the administration has used the law as a pretext to allow over 120,000 minors to remain in the country, resulting in “a national security and public safety crisis,” according to Joe Kolb, a Center fellow and author of the two reports.

Vaughn concluded, “currently an average of 260 unaccompanied youths are being allowed in every day, compared to about 150 a day in 2014. Sheriff Louderback speaks for all of the traumatized communities when he said, ‘We need help.’”

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.