Just a quick break from Katrina blogging to point you to my latest column on the continuing spread of MS-13 in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and across the country. An excerpt:

The peaceful suburbs of Washington, D.C., are beginning to look and feel like East Los Angeles. The violent illegal alien gang Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) has thoroughly penetrated the region—and its murderous members continue to be aided and abetted by reckless government officials at every level who refuse to enforce our immigration laws.

As I’ve reported over the past year, MS-13 is the most notorious criminal alien gang enterprise on the American landscape. The Justice Department’s (belated) summer crackdown on the crime racket has resulted in the arrest of 515 MS-13 gang members who will be prosecuted for criminal cases and/or deported (many after having re-entered the country illegally despite multiple convictions and deportations).

At the local malls in Montgomery County, Md., where I live, gang stabbings are increasingly common. Earlier this summer, a spate of knifing attacks involving reputed MS-13 gangsters took place at a nearby Target store. Yes, Target—where the only fights that shoppers should have to worry about are the tug-of-war spats between soccer moms battling over Sonia Kashuk makeup bags on sale in Aisle 2.

MS-13 thugs are packing weapons far more lethal than blush brushes. The El Salvador-based syndicate has a special love affair with machetes. Last week, a jury convicted one MS-13 member for a machete attack at a Fairfax County, Va., movie theater. The brutal crime left a rival gang member with three severed fingers. If MS-13 limited its violence to killing off its competitors, maybe the rest of us could afford to shrug off the illegal alien gang takeover of the mid-Atlantic corridor. But innocents from Boston to Raleigh have been caught up in the violence and cops are in the crosshairs as well.

Last year, area law enforcement officials issued a warning that MS-13 was planning to ambush Montgomery Count, Md., cops during service calls. In June, I obtained leaked unclassified intelligence from the Federal Bureau of Investigations-Norfolk, Va., division reporting on a similar gang order issued in the Tidewater, Va., area…

I continue to hear from law enforcement officials across the country about the increasing threat of illegal alien gangs and the frustration felt by rank-and-file cops who are discouraged or forbidden from helping enforce immigration laws. President Bush simply adds fuel to that frustration by continuing to embrace open borders, politicizing the broken deportation system, and refusing to drop his ill-conceived amnesty plan.

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