From the NYT:

U.S. Anti-Gang Sweep Yields Over 1,100 Arrests

By MIKE McPHATE MARCH 28, 2016 Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,100 people since February as part of an enforcement campaign against gangs that traffic guns, drugs and people across United States borders, officials said. The gangs caught in the dragnet were not small-time operators, said Sarah Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Actually, targeting for imprisonment and deportation the small-time operator foot soldiers in the big gangs is a key innovation, which may help explain the declining Hispanic crime rates seen by American Renaissance’s new report The Color of Crime 2016 versus its 2005 version of the same report.

“We are talking about sophisticated organizations who are involved in human trafficking, who are involved in drug smuggling, gun smuggling,” she said. Of the 1,133 people arrested during the five-week operation, more than 900 were members or associates of gangs, including MS-13, the Sureños, the Norteños, the Bloods and several others based in prisons, the immigration agency said in a statement. A majority of the enforcement actions took place in and around Los Angeles; San Francisco; Houston; El Paso, Tex.; Atlanta; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, the authorities said. There were also arrests along the East Coast. The Newark area had more than 20, while New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington each had more than 10. Called Project Shadowfire, the operation was conducted under the banner of Operation Community Shield, an initiative begun in 2005 by the immigration agency to target violent gangs. Regular sweeps over the past 11 years have resulted in more than 40,000 gang-related arrests and the seizure of more than 8,000 firearms, officials said. In the latest campaign, conducted in tandem with local and state law enforcement agencies, officials seized more than 20 kilograms of narcotics — including marijuana, cocaine, heroin — illicit cash and weapons, Ms. Rodriguez of I.C.E. said.

20 kilograms / 1,133 arrests is practically nothing. This program is closer to ethnic cleansing of the lowest Latino lowlifes in America than it is to arresting Mr. Big.

Most of those arrested in the immigration agency’s sweep were American nationals, but about 240 were natives of countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, officials said. More than 130 people were accused of immigration violations, and about 80 were arrested because of open warrants. Agents seized 150 firearms and more than $70,000 in American currency, officials said.

Once again, piddling seizures for 1,133 arrests.

According to reporter Sam Quinones, this 11-year-old government program of mass round-ups of gangbangers really works. My recollection was that in 2005, around the time Los Angeles elected its first Mexican mayor in a century, overgrown juvenile delinquent Antonio Villaraigosa, there was a surge in violence and graffiti, which is turf-marking.

Ironically, the former mayor Jim Hahn was defeated in 2005 for the best thing he’d done as mayor — dumping the black police chief and replacing him with Giuliani’s former top cop William Bratton, who is probably the smartest strategist in a field that doesn’t attract all that much brainpower. Hahn’s hiring Bratton broke apart the fragile black-white coalition that had helped Hahn defeat Villaraigosa in 2oo1.

But Bratton had a new trick up his sleeve. According to an article by Quinones a couple of years ago, Bratton introduced to the LAPD a new strategy to crush gangs in conjunction with federal help.

Traditionally, the LAPD had focused on arresting the “kingpins,” the leaders of the gangs. Kill the head and the body will die! This assumed, however, that there were a few really bad criminals and a lot of marginal kids who would straighten up and fly right once the malign influence of the kingpin was gone. Instead, removing the leadership just led to wars to become leaders.

So, LAPD started using federal RICO indictments to round up all the foot soldiers in massive military-like operations and then packing them off to federal penitentiaries in places like Arkansas, where there was no infrastructure for Latino prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia to control the streets of California from inside the joint in the middle of the country.