The Washington Post has this article on the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to deport gang members who have immigrated to the US. The big ingenious move here was to have local law enforcement call customs and let them know that there is a Guatemalan gang hanging out in Adam’s Morgan or what have you:
Customs Jails 1,000 Suspected Gang Members
Federal immigration and customs officers have arrested more than 1,000 suspected gang members and associates so far this year as part of a nationwide campaign aimed at deporting illegal immigrants with suspected ties to violent criminal organizations, officials said yesterday.
Much like similar efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to target suspected terrorist sympathizers, the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-gang program seeks to use immigration laws to remove many alleged gang members from the country rather than pursue them through U.S. criminal courts, officials said.
The campaign, dubbed Operation Community Shield and overseen by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, has resulted in arrests of 1,057 alleged gang members over the past five months — including 582 suspects apprehended during a concerted push in the last two weeks of July. Eleven of the suspects were arrested in the Washington area, officials said.
The operation got its start in March as a way to target Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a violent street organization active in Northern Virginia and other parts of the South. But the program has quickly expanded to encompass alleged members of 80 gangs in 25 states, including Latin Kings, Asian Boyz and Jamaican Posse.
The crackdown comes as part of a renewed concentration on violent street gangs by the federal law enforcement agencies after several years of focusing primarily on terrorism issues.
Under the ICE anti-gang program, local and state police departments have supplied federal immigration and customs agents with the names of thousands of suspected gang members. Federal agents are comparing those lists with federal immigration databases to target members or associates who are in the country illegally or who have committed serious crimes that make them eligible for deportation, officials said.
Chertoff said that more than 900 of those arrested so far are eligible for deportation. The rest will probably be prosecuted for crimes including immigration violations and illegal possession of a firearm, officials said.
Perhaps Japan could try something like this to deal with its Chinese gang problems. Of course the cops are probably in bed with the mobsters so it probably won’t work. But it’s an idea.
Does Japan even have a real Chinese gangster problem? The Yakuza are still a big deal, but everything I’ve ever heard about the Chinese mafia just sounds like urban legends.
Well, the current mayor of Las Vegas was a defense attorney for mobsters, and he claims that he never believed “the mafia” was real until he heard a wiretap of an initiation ceremony.
It’s very possible that the dozens of robberies, visible drug activity, and conflicts with the Japanese yakuza are all isolated incidents that a paranoid media, police force, and public have worked up into some grand conspiracy theory. But I doubt it.
That said, it’s sad that the relatively small problem of Chinese organized crime is used by the police, government, media, and public to create an atmosphere of distrust of Asian-looking foreigners throughout Japan and a legal and social framework that A) Encourages immigration that’s harmful to Japan (in the form of a large number of illegal immigrants including thousands of trafficked prostitutes) and B) is hostile to immigration that would benefit Japan. That’s why this idea (report the known gang members to immigration so they can deport them) sounds like a good idea. I mean, I have a feeling that the police will be unlikely to turn in their meal tickets in the interest of cleaning up the streets (just look at Masamania’s pictures of a Koban located right smack in the middle of a red light district to see what I mean) but it’s a start.