A senior leader of the brutal MS-13 gang was arrested in Long Island for his alleged role in nearly a dozen murders, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
Joel “Momia” Vargas-Escobar was the alleged leader of the “Parkview clique” of MS-13 operating out of the Las Vegas area, federal prosecutors said.
JUDGE RULES ALLEGED MS-13 LEADER ARRESTED BY FBI TO REMAIN IN CUSTODY FOR NOW
The Department of Justice seal is seen during a news conference at the DOJ office in Washington, May 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Vargas-Escobar was deported to El Salvador in 2018 but illegally reentered the country and had been on the run for nearly four years, the DOJ said.
An indictment from the District of Nevada charges Vargas-Escobar, and other alleged members of the “Parkview clique,” with committing 11 murders over about a year in Nevada and California. The indictment alleges that MS-13 members kidnapped victims and drove them to remote locations in the mountains and desert where they were tortured and killed.
Prosecutors say Vargas-Escobar personally ordered at least two of the charged murders.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks before President Donald Trump at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, March 14, 2025. (POOL)
“The American people are safer following the arrest of yet another MS-13 leader thanks to the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and Joint Task Force Vulcan,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This terrorist entered our country illegally and is accused of orchestrating 11 murders — under President Trump’s leadership, we will not rest until this terrorist organization is completely dismantled and its members are behind bars.”
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An Alaska woman is accusing the Alaska Department of Public Safety, two Alaska State Troopers and the A&E Television Network of compromising her privacy and safety as a confidential informant after they filmed an arrest without her consent.
The woman, identified in the filings as Jane Doe, says that she received death threats after she was a confidential informant whose information led to an arrest that was filmed and later aired on the Alaska State Troopers reality show.
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California’s billionaires are not the only ones fighting back against the state’s largest health workers union this election season. Now the clinics are too.
The California Primary Care Assn., which represents more than 2,300 community health clinics, and Open Door Community Health Centers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West from placing an initiative on the November ballot that would dictate how clinics spend money.
The clinic measure is less prominent than the billionaire-backed fight against a wealth tax, but recently came closer to appearing before voters.
The clinic’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the union’s ballot measure would interfere with federal laws and regulations that place strict spending requirements on nonprofit health clinics that serve low-income patients.
Joey Cachuela, general counsel for the clinic association, said in a statement the initiative threatens patient care. “We are filing this preelection challenge and need the courts to act to prevent this drastic measure from ever going to the ballot. Patient lives are at risk,” Cachuela said.
Renée Saldaña, a spokesperson for the healthcare workers union, said the proposed initiative was “legally sound” and called the lawsuit a “desperate attempt by the clinic industry to avoid accountability.”
Dr. Elizabeth Sophy, right, who is a part of Father Joe’s Villages Street Health Team, examines Devlin Chambers at an encampment in downtown San Diego on March 22, 2024. Chambers, 60, said he has a pinched nerve in his back.
(Kristian Carreon / CalMatters)
Last month, union members turned in more than 1 million signatures to qualify the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act” for the ballot. The union collected nearly double the number of signatures required to place the proposal before voters.
Under California’s election rules, proposals that gather enough signatures qualify for the ballot after the secretary of state’s office verifies their validity.
The union proposal would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90% of revenue on services that fulfill the stated mission to “provide primary and preventive care to low-income and underserved populations.” It would also punish clinics that do not adhere to this spending formula and place the money in a state-operated account that could later be used for worker training and staffing programs.
“It is the intent of this initiative to create a reasonable minimum standard of mission-directed spending … to ensure clinic patient service delivery and workforce stability is prioritized over management and overhead spending,” the initiative states.
Union leaders and members argue that clinics spend too much money on executive pay and administrative overhead and too little on patients. They also contend that some clinics spend only half of their revenue on direct patient care, an allegation that clinics call misleading.
“We have one message for our clinics: Put patients first. It’s time for an end to wasteful spending. It’s time to make sure clinics are putting their money in patient care and not CEO pay,” said Brisa Barrera, a medical assistant from Santa Rosa Community Health during an April rally to celebrate delivering the signatures.
The clinic association, however, argues that the initiative would illegally force hundreds of community health centers to close by stripping nearly $2 billion from health systems.
Tory Starr, chief executive of Open Door Community Health Centers, which operates clinics in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, said the measure would be “devastating” to the organization’s rural patients and would result in layoffs, reduced services and closures.
A nearly identical version of the ballot initiative failed to pass in the state Legislature earlier this year.
The initiative is one of three measures the union has submitted to the ballot. Another aims to limit healthcare executive pay at $450,000, and SEIU-UHW is also backing the “billionaire’s tax” that has drawn ire from both Democrats and Republicans.
Hwang writes for CalMatters.
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