POLICE CHARGE MS-13 MEMBERS IN MURDER PROBE

More than two dozen MS-13 gang members and affiliates were arrested and charged following a months-long murder and drug trafficking investigation centred on a rural California farm city that the gang turned into a base for its operations.

MS-13 took advantage of limited resources in the city of Mendota and used it and other areas of Fresno County to “conduct their crimes, to hide out from crimes that they committed in other jurisdictions and to prepare to commit crimes in states as far away as New York,” Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said.

Mendota has a population of roughly 11,000 people and lies 60 kilometres west of Fresno in California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley. Nearly the entire population is Hispanic, with many immigrants from El Salvador.

MS-13 is linked to more than 12 murders in Mendota and western Fresno County over the past two years, officials said.