Posted: Friday, 02 July 2010 2:20PM

Feds arrested 10 illegal immigrants from Mexico in Gallatin County

jonathan athens Reporting


jathens@ktvm.com


Federal agents and local law enforcement officers over a two week span arrested 10 illegal immigrants from Mexico in Gallatin County, seven of whom they say are members of the Sureno gang or are associates of that gang.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement made the announcement in a news release this afternoon.
The arrests are part of a Operation Community Shield, a program that the federal government launched five years ago in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies. Community Shield's objective to locate, arrest, convict and deport foreign-born street gang members.
An article in the March 3, 2010 edition of Police magazine provided this explanation and description of Surenos:
"Sureños can be found in every major city in the U.S. They can be found in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and South America. The big transnational super gangs such as Florence, 18th Street, and Mara Salvatrucha threaten the stability of some Central American nations.
Sureños can be classified into three major types:
Real Sureños are Southern California Hispanic gang members who have migrated from their breeding grounds in "Califas" and settled in a community near you. Individually, many of them are sophisticated hard-core gang thugs.But many were only peripheral gangsters and nobody gang claimers. These "less than hard-core busters" can sometimes become big fish in a small pond by utilizing their "I'm from L.A." credentials.
Both the "hard-core" and "half-ass" gang member will boldly mark their new home with gang graffiti claiming their original Los Angeles Varrio such as "WF", "F-13", "XV3", and "MS-13." They might also write "So Cal," "213" or "310" (telephone prefix numbers), and sometimes the words "SUR 13," "South Side" or "Sureños."
The second type of Sureño is a gang member recruited and indoctrinated from your local community by the first type. Most of these "second-hand Sureños" have never been to Southern California.
Or they may also be a few ex-Southern California gang members from rival gangs who find themselves in a foreign environment, and therefore join together under the Sureño umbrella name to protect themselves. They may utilize local gang members to boost their numbers, calling themselves "Southsiders," "SS," "Sureno 13," "SX3" or some other reference to Southern California to tie them together.
The third kind of gang members calling themselves Sureños are the least connected to Southern California. They are Mexican Nationals, or natives of other Central American nations, who travel through the illegal immigration conduits controlled by the Sureño gangs. Street gangs such as Florence, 18th Street, and Mara Salvatrucha control major lines of human trafficking; they influence young men who utilize these routes and become indoctrinated in the Sureño gangster lifestyle.
When these men arrive in your community, they adopt the Sureño name and try to imitate the "American Hispanics" who helped bring them here. In reality, these Sureños have only a confused understanding of what it means to be a Sureño gangster. Untrained in American gang graffiti particulars, their "placasos" (plaques or badges in gang graffiti) are crude and less aesthetic than the U.S. gang placasos. Besides "Sur 13," these groups might mix in "Pandilla Sureño" (Sureño Gang), and "Sureños Mejicanos."
The thirteenth letter of the alphabet is "M," which in Sureño thinking stands for "EME," or the Mexican Mafia. Tattoos and graffiti depicting "13," "Xlll," "X3," "trece" (Spanish for 13) and "3ce," are all Sureño identifiers. Sureños and Norteños sometimes use the ancient Aztec language. The word "kanpol" is Nahuatl for Southerner, and "ixpol" is Northerner. The number 13 was drawn by depicting two parallel horizontal lines with three dots above them. Each line represents five and each dot is one."

The federal government did not provide mug shots or the names of the 10 illegal immigrants agents arrested.
Agents arrested eight in Bozeman and two in West Yellowstone, according to the release.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Montana is prosecuting one of the illegal immigrants for illegally re-entering the country, the release stated.

Anchor/Reporter Jonathan Athens can be reached atL jathens@ktvm.com

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