FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Three alleged MS-13 gang members have been federally charged in connection with a killing a decade ago in Florida, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday, seeking to highlight the Trump administration’s push to prosecute violent gangs.
Bondi joined law enforcement officials in Fort Lauderdale to promote the Justice Department’s efforts to go after the gang, which the Republican administration has designated a “foreign terrorist organization” and has seized on as the threat posed by illegal immigration.
“More arrests are coming,” Bondi said. “If you are a gang member living in this country, I’d self-deport right now because we’re coming after you.”
The three alleged gang members are among nine who have been arrested in four killings in South Florida in 2014 and 2015. The three men federally charged last month are accused of participating in the killing of someone who was stabbed about 100 times and then shot, the attorney general said.
Jose Ezequiel Gamez-Maravilla and Wilber Rosendo Navarro-Escobar were arrested in Florida. Hugo Adiel Bermudez-Martinez was arrested in Minnesota. Emails seeking comment were sent to attorneys for the men.
The violent killings in South Florida were carried out using knives or machetes, authorities say. The cases were reopened in 2020 after going cold, and one of the investigations led to a multi-day excavation to recover the body of Joel Canizales-Lara in 2021, after he was reported missing in 2014.
The announcement comes a week after Bondi lauded the arrest of the alleged East Coast leader of the MS-13 gang.
In the past decade, the Justice Department has intensified its focus on MS-13, which originated as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles but grew into a transnational gang based in El Salvador. The gang has members in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico and thousands of members across the U.S. with numerous branches or cliques.
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Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed.
