"Parasites on Their Own People"

By John Leo

Chicago's Humboldt Park is a dangerous area, but last March Blanca Ibarra and her family felt safe enough to troop to a photo studio near the park. It was Ibarra's 15th birthday, and the family wanted to record the event. Two jittery gang members, under the impression that a rival group was gathering, opened fire, wounding two and killing one. In cities large and small, the surge of new immigrants has led to a sharp rise in crimes committed by ethnic gangs. In earlier waves of migration, the members were Irish, Jewish and Italian. Now they are primarily Hispanic and, increasingly, Asian. In January FBI Director William Webster added Asian gangs to the bureau's list of priority concerns.

The West Coast has been hardest hit, particularly the Los Angeles area. Says Detective John Clark: "We're keeping a lid on it, but that's about all." There are 422 gangs reported in the county, and they "are putting communities over the barrel of a gun," says Tom Garrison, an aide in the youth gang agency of Los Angeles. This "is a war zone." The Mexican Mafia and Nuestra Familia, both hatched in prison, have long been a problem. But now Monterey Park, a once placid community east of the city, is torn by Chinese thugs. Orange County, home to tens of thousands of Indochinese immigrants, has a severe extortion problem. Hispanic gangs, some of them using identifying tattoos and hand signals, have spread throughout the area. The Mojados (wetbacks) specialize in small-time crime in downtown Los Angeles: pickpocketing and robbing motorists at knifepoint in underground garages. "It's find a buddy and go to Fifth and Hill for an easy hit or two," says Police Sergeant Joe Suarez.

Like earlier immigrant gangs, observes Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, the new arrivals "at the core are acting as parasites on their own people." In classic fashion they concentrate at first on shaking down local merchants. One difference, officials agree, is that the modern gang is vastly more violent and better armed than its predecessors. The Viet Ching, Vietnamese of Chinese extraction in Los Angeles, pack .357 Magnums and, occasionally, machine guns. In San Francisco, says Inspector John McKenna, "it's not uncommon to see guys carrying grenades."

While immigrant gangs once stuck to their own turf, rarely bothering the citizens uptown, the new gangs are becoming highly mobile, moving easily around a city and sometimes across the country. West Coast police report that Vietnamese groups may strike one night in San Jose, a couple of nights later in Dallas or Washington. Chinese gangs hound their prey all over the country. "They operate as though any Chinese person anywhere is fair game," according to a recent FBI report.

Two new groups of immigrant criminals are unusual. The Colombian cocaine dealers, sent to the U.S. as operatives in the drug trade, work out of South Florida and up the East Coast. Thus far they have limited themselves to what they know best, coke, but officials fear that with their capital, highly developed organization and icy ferocity, they could easily expand their activities.

The other unprecedented gangster phenomenon is the Marielitos, who arrived in Florida in 1980 when Fidel Castro loaded up a refugee boat lift with the dregs of his prisons. The crime rate in Miami's Little Havana jumped an astonishing 83% within months of their arrival. The Marielitos have since fanned out around the country, and special police squads have been set up to deal with them in cities as varied as Las Vegas and Harrisburg, Pa. With no central bosses or structure, the Marielitos operate as loose bands of conscienceless predators, uneducated and wild but also shrewd. One of their first bold strokes: dressed as police SWAT teams, they began invading the homes of Miami drug dealers. Besides stealing cash and dope, the raiders made a point of pistol-whipping, torturing and occasionally raping their victims, who, given their business, could not call police. Last year two drug dealers shot two Dade SWAT team members, thinking they were Marielitos in disguise.

Most disaffected immigrants join gangs for the conventional reasons: a sense of belonging, easy money, the need to define themselves against a bewildering, alien culture. "They group for protection, then quickly graduate up when they see the big profits in crime," says Garrison. Many authorities believe that the problem is here to stay. "Today the fellows do not leave the gang," says University of Chicago Sociologist Irving Spergel. "They are not educated. There are no more unskilled jobs. There is no place to go." Others think the new bands will fade, just as most older ones did. "Gangs last only as long as members can't make it in the mainstream," says UCLA Psychologist Rex Beaber. "As the expectations of success go up, the need for the protective gang enclave diminishes." One scholar already sees some reason for hope in Miami. The offspring of the brutal Marielitos seem to be different from their parents, reports University of Miami Sociologist Jerome Wolfe. "The children have been no great social problem," he says. "They are being assimilated and Americanized. They are future good citizens, like the descendants of the once feared Irish, Italian and Jewish gang members."

With reporting by Martin Casey/Miami and Richard Woodbury/ Los Angeles