"Rather than default to easy alarmism or xenophobic caricatures, Dudley captures the origins of the gang as a human story of migration and migrant communities, and a policy story, about the unintended consequences of US policy. By detailing the experiences of gang members and victims alike, he anatomizes the complex, fluid dynamics of this elusive transnational network. A startling book." —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author
“In MS-13, Steven Dudley skillfully cuts through the hype and the clichés to tell the dirty, true story of the gang—from its painful birth in Los Angeles to its bloody adolescence in El Salvador to the showdown in the Trump era. People need to read this thorough investigation to find a better way.”—Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and Gangster Warlords
MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang (HarperCollins, 2020) tells the story of the creation and spread of the gang as seen through the lives of several of its members, as well as numerous law enforcement struggling to mitigate its influence. With an estimated ten thousand members operating in dozens of states and linked to thousands of grisly murders each year in the US and abroad, the MS-13 is one of the most infamous gangs on earth.
But it is also misunderstood. It is less a hierarchical drug cartel than a hand-to-mouth, loosely knit criminal organization whose violent ethos serves to reinforce its social bonds, which is its true beating heart. Journalist and longtime organized crime investigator Steven Dudley spent ten years investigating the gang and brings readers inside the group to tell a larger story of how a flawed US and Central American policy, and exploitative and unequal economic systems in the United States and abroad have helped foster the gang and sustain it.