U.S. immigration authorities finally have a win to report after they detained and deported an extremely dangerous leader of a Peruvian criminal gang last week.
On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) reported the removal of Giovani Danti Gamarra-Puertas, the 63-year-old founder of Peru’s Los Destructores criminal gang.
According to a government press release, the Los Destructores is “a Peruvian criminal group known for committing abductions.”
ICE took Gamarra-Puertas into custody after U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped him at the border near Calexico, California, in June 2022, the statement added.
Border Patrol said Gamarra-Puertas was attempting to avoid an arrest warrant in his home country and trying to evade prosecution by sneaking into the U.S.
“ERO San Diego deportation officers are committed to preventing dangerous individuals like Gamarra-Puertas from entering our communities through illegitimate claims to avoid prosecution from their home countries,” said Jamison Matuszewski, field office director, ERO San Diego, according to the release.
“This field office will continue to identify, and perform all necessary checks to assure that individuals who try to circumvent our immigration laws are found out and removed.”
U.S. authorities added that Gamarra-Puertas is also affiliated with other Peruvian criminal organizations, such as the Los Injertos and Malditos de San Juan de Lurigancho.
Gamarra-Puertas was loaded aboard an ICE Air Operations charter flight and sent back to Lima, Peru, on Thursday where he was transferred to the custody of Peruvian law enforcement officials at Jorge Chavez International.
Should border security be the top priority of our next president?
According to Refworld, Los Destructores was founded in the 1990s and set about committing a series of abductions, killings, and robberies using assault weapons. The group is known as one of Peru’s “bloodiest gangs.”
These criminal gangs have gained a dangerous foothold in the U.S., especially the Salvadoran MS-13 street gang which was exported to El Salvador and Central America after it was founded as a protection racket for illegal aliens in the 1970s in Los Angeles.
The gang grew in dangerous proportions when it started sending Central American operatives into the U.S. illegally, bringing vicious murders and drug dealing along with it.
In 2018, a whopping 99 members of the criminal MS-13 were arrested in the U.S., and immigration officials admitted that they all had come into the country as “unaccompanied minors.”
The next year, then-President Donald Trump made a special policy of targeting MS-13 members for deportation and arrest. In July of that year, his administration charged 22 MS-13 gang members with crimes.
Others were also prosecuted. In 2020, for instance, MS-13 member Josue Portillo pleaded guilty to organizing the brutal murder of four New York teens. He was convicted and handed a 55-year prison term.
And in 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped and arrested a group of MS-13 gang members and a convicted child rapist, preventing them from sneaking back into the U.S.
MS-13 is far from the only gang problem from south of the border descending upon the United States. In 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Mexican drug cartel activity “spilling over” into the United States is still a “significant security concern.”
Wray added that it isn’t just the drug trade that is fueling the gangs. “There’s not just human trafficking from a labor perspective, but also sex trafficking,” he said.
ICE and Border Patrol agents have also arrested foreign terrorists who they caught trying to sneak across the border.
The problem is only getting worse, not better, as millions of illegals — including foreign terrorists, gang members, drug cartel killers, rapists and other sex criminals — see President Joe Biden’s open border policies as an invitation to walk across our unprotected borders to prey upon Americans.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.