Photo Courtesy of DOJ
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Michael V. Cusenza
The U.S. Department of Justice this week unveiled a series of measures aimed at dismantling gangs and cartels, including the formation of a Transnational Organized Crime Task Force.
According to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the panel will be led by the deputy AG and will be composed of experienced prosecutors. It will be organized into one subcommittee for each of the five target groups: Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13; Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion; the Sinaloa Cartel; Clan del Golfo; and Lebanese Hezbollah.
New York federal prosecutors are set to play key roles on the task force. The MS-13 subcommittee will be led by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. The brutal gang has stepped up its presence in Queens and on Long Island over the last decade. Sessions noted that Durham has played a significant role in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Long Island Task Force, which has arrested hundreds of MS-13 members.
The subcommittee on Lebanese Hezbollah will be led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ilan Graff of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Graff is overseeing the prosecution of two alleged members of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization, the first such operatives to be charged with terrorism offenses in the United States.
Sessions has ordered each of the subcommittees to provide specific recommendations within 90 days on how to disrupt and dismantle transnational organized crime, whether through prosecution, diplomacy, or other lawful means.
The administration’s aggressive move against such international criminal cohorts began in February 2017, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the federal government to “ensure that federal law enforcement agencies give a high priority and devote sufficient resources to efforts to identify, interdict, disrupt, and dismantle transnational criminal organizations.”
Sessions subsequently directed the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force, and the DOJ Criminal Division to identify top transnational criminal groups “that threaten the safety and prosperity of the U.S. and its allies.” As a result of the review, Sessions designated the five aforementioned organizations as the top transnational crime threats.
Additionally, since taking office in January 2017, borough native Trump has visited Long Island twice to discuss law enforcement efforts regarding MS-13 and its threat to Nassau and Suffolk counties. On Oct. 23, 2017, Sessions formally designated MS-13 as a priority target for OCDETF.
“The day I was sworn in as attorney general, President Trump sent me an executive order to dismantle transnational criminal organizations—the gangs and cartels who flood our streets with drugs and violence,” Sessions said on Monday. “We embrace that order and we carry it out every single day. Today, to increase our effectiveness, I am putting in place new leadership to drive our transnational organized crime efforts and forming a Transnational Organized Crime Task Force of experienced prosecutors that will coordinate and optimize the department’s efforts to take each of these groups off of our streets for good.”
