Fairfax, Virginia is essentially suburban Washington, DC, and they have an El Salvadorian gang problem.
Imported gang violence continues to afflict Virginia: authorities charged illegal alien suspects with murder and all ten suspects for gang participation and abduction on Thursday for the “brutal” slaying of 15-year-old Damaris Reyes Rivas.
Police arrested ten in connection with Rivas’ death: four adults and six teenagers. FOX5 reports “Jose Ivan Castillo Rivas, 18, Springfield, Wilmer A. Sanchez Serrano, 21, Cindy Blanco Hernandez, 18, and Aldair J. Miranda Carcamo, 18” are adults. Another 17-year-old, Venus Iraheta, who has lived in the U.S. for the past ten years—making her a “DREAMer” eligible for amnesty under an Obama executive order—is also in police custody. Police did not identify the other five juveniles. All ten face charges of abduction and gang participation. Rivas and Serrano are charged with murder.
Rivas died on or close to January 8 of upper-body trauma in a “savage, brutal killing,” Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said. Police reportedly found video evidence of Rivas’ death and declined to name the gang connected to the teenager’s murder. According to Maria Reyes, Rivas’ mother, her daughter had gotten involved with the El Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 recently. She told FOX 5 she is receiving violent threats from gang members “blaming her for the arrests” and is afraid for her own life.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed detainers on the four adults charged with murder and has asked Fairfax County to alert them before they are released from custody.
One-fifth of the total population of El Salvador lives in the U.S. “El Salvador is the top country of birth for immigrants to Virginia,” the Associated Press reported in 2014. Nearly a quarter, or 23 percent, of Northern Virginia residents are foreigners, and 68 percent of the state’s foreign-born population lives there, researchers found in 2014. In 1970, only one in 100 residents in Virginia was foreign-born—but now, it is one in nine.
Roughly 247,000 illegal aliens live in Virginia, according to one estimate, meaning the state ranks in the top ten states with the largest populations of illegals. Among those are nearly 40,000 illegals from El Salvador. Another estimate pegged the total number of illegals at 275,000 in 2012, or 3.5 percent of the state’s population. Similarly, immigration led to a boom in the Latino or Hispanic population in Old Dominion since the 1990s: “The Latino share of Virginia’s population grew from 2.6 percent in 1990 to 4.7 percent in 2000 to 8.6 percent (or 707,962 people) in 2013,” according to the American Immigration Council.