Federal agents arrested a man in Hyattsville they say is a high-ranking leader of the MS-13 transnational gang and a name on the U.S. Department of Justice terror watchlist. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified him as 29-year-old Franklin Ariel Espinal-Cabrera, taken into custody on September 11.
ICE says Espinal-Cabrera is the first word leader for the Coronado Locos Salvatruchos clique of MS-13 and goes by the moniker Inconforme, according to WBFF. The agency says he was nominated to the Justice Department's terrorist watchlist and issued a terrorist screening number, and officials describe his presence in the country as a direct threat to American communities.
Robert Guadian said the arrest exemplifies the type of case ICE seeks when targeting what he called the worst offenders, adding that Espinal-Cabrera has no reason to be in American communities, per the same station's report.
A Decade-Long Path Through the Immigration and Criminal Justice Systems
According to ICE, Espinal-Cabrera's case stretches back more than a decade. Border Patrol agents encountered him on July 4, 2014, after he illegally entered the United States as an unaccompanied child near Rio Grande City, Texas, the station reports. Under the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, federal agencies apprehending non-contiguous unaccompanied migrant children like him were required to transfer him to Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours for screening and sponsor placement while his case awaited an immigration hearing, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Years later, in March 2017, ICE says Espinal-Cabrera was arrested in Harris County, Texas, after being charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon, and released that November on a $2,000 bond. The following year, in August 2018, ICE officers executing a federal arrest warrant in Houston against an MS-13 member charged with homicide encountered Espinal-Cabrera, who ICE said admitted he was a member of MS-13. He was subsequently charged with illegally entering the United States that September and convicted and sentenced to time served that December, per ICE's account relayed by the outlet.
A Department of Justice immigration judge ordered him removed to El Salvador on December 16, 2024, ICE said. He resurfaced in Hyattsville nearly two years later, where agents made the arrest that has drawn renewed attention to MS-13's roots in the region.
Illegal Reentry Carries Steep Federal Penalties
Reentering the United States after a formal deportation order is itself a federal crime. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1326, illegal reentry carries a statutory maximum of two years in prison, a penalty that climbs to 10 or 20 years if the person was removed following convictions for certain non-aggravated or aggravated felonies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The case also illustrates how non-citizen gang members end up on national security watchlists in the first place. A July 2023 Government Accountability Office report found the FBI and Terrorist Screening Center expanded the federal Terrorist Screening Dataset in March 2016 to include transnational organized crime actors, a change that generated a large volume of watchlist nominations from an FBI task force specifically targeting MS-13 and 18th Street gang members.
Prince George's County's Long History as an MS-13 Hub
The Hyattsville arrest comes amid reported MS-13 activity in Prince George's and Montgomery Counties.
That history has collided repeatedly with federal prosecutions in recent months. In January, federal prosecutors in Maryland expanded racketeering charges against MS-13 members in a Baltimore case involving the Centrales Locos Salvatruchas clique, with allegations including murder, narcotics distribution, and extortion, as detailed in Hoodline's coverage of the case.
The ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Baltimore Field Office directs federal civil immigration enforcement, detainers, and targeted gang removal operations across Maryland, a mandate that places the Espinal-Cabrera case squarely within its jurisdiction. The arrest also comes amid the federal initiative Operation Take Back America.
Similar cases have surfaced elsewhere this year. In September, a Lavaca County sheriff’s deputy detained a different El Salvador national during an operation in Fayette County, whom U.S. Border Patrol documented as an MS-13 gang member in 2021 and whom ICE and Homeland Security Investigations identified in the Terrorist Screening Dataset, following a 2024 deportation order, a case reported by The Victoria Advocate. U.S. Customs and Border Protection records show agents apprehended 312 documented MS-13 members along U.S. borders in Fiscal Year 2022, while encountering 98 individuals listed in the federal Terrorist Screening Dataset during the same period.
