![]() Francisco’s apartment building was controlled by S.W.P. Jaime lived in Mara Salvatrucha territory. ![]() But they lived on opposite sides of town and that summer, drifted apart. They played soccer after school, passed notes in class and kept watch for the bullies who picked on the newcomers. By the end of the day, the two boys were best friends. On the first day of school, Francisco sat next to Jaime Alvarenga, who had made the crossing in 2001 through the Arizona desert. In 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service picked up more than 5,000 unaccompanied children trying to enter the United States illegally, more than 80 percent of them from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in later years, the number increased to 7,000. Their parents believed that the American suburbs offered a better chance at education and jobs than the violent countries they had left behind. They left behind grandmothers and aunts who served as surrogate parents and reunited with mothers and fathers they remembered only from photographs. Gray Schultz Middle School came the same way. Many of the new classmates he met that year at Alverta B. The trip was terrifying, but later he would say it had toughened him for life on Long Island. Francisco was 12 when he crossed from Tijuana to San Diego in 2001, stuffed in the trunk of a Honda next to several strangers. She had come ahead in the early 1990s, as the Salvadoran civil war was ending, leaving Francisco in the care of an aunt until she could save $5,000 to pay a smuggler to ferry him across the border to join her. He kept the text on a folded square of paper tucked in his wallet.įRANCISCO arrived in Hempstead, a decaying inner-ring suburb in Nassau County, nine years after his mother. The prayer soothed Francisco when he felt scared. They ended the meeting with the gang’s prayer. Mara Salvatrucha was encroaching on their territory, the school grounds. S.W.P.’s leader, an old-timer in his late 20s, ordered them to stay vigilant. members were not certain of the identity of the men, but they had an idea. El Niño was there, and filled Francisco in on details about the attack: There had been about a half-dozen men and they had asked the boys about their gang affiliation, then one had pulled a knife. Francisco grabbed a beer.Ī few minutes later, as classes let out, 50 others arrived. Twenty members of Salvadorans With Pride stood around sipping Coronas on the scarred brown grass of a park near the high school. On Monday, he bundled up in a sweatshirt and coat and walked the two miles to Hempstead to find out what had happened to his friend. On Sunday, he worked a Sweet 16 party, where his main task was to make sure the white teenagers were not hiding bottles of liquor under the tables. That night, Francisco served tables at another wedding. Mikey died in the hospital early the next morning. Francisco had scars to mark his own close calls: an inch-long swipe across his left eyebrow, a long seam across his right bicep, dents in his shins and over his left knee where he had been sprayed by a pellet gun, a gouge in his lower back dug by an enemy knife. Three other friends had been attacked in gang violence since he moved to Long Island from El Salvador in 2001 two had died. He never mentioned the gang in front of his work friends.įrancisco had become adept at controlling his feelings. “I have to go to work.”Īt the Sandcastle, a catering hall in Franklin Park where Francisco was serving at a wedding that night, he pushed aside thoughts of Mikey and focused on the promise of good tips. 18, 2008, trying to sound both comforting and authoritative. “Call the homies and go to the park,” Francisco told El Niño that afternoon, Jan. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he was worried about ending up in jail, or worse. Lately, however, Francisco was spending less time on the street, more time in the tuxedo. ![]() He sometimes wore a balaclava to cover his face when he left the house. He had dropped out of school after the move Mara Salvatrucha members controlled the schools in Uniondale. ![]() ![]() Even El Niño was just a wannabe, who aspired to join Francisco’s gang.įrancisco had been seeing the gang less lately, since his family moved to Uniondale from Hempstead. The kid was not in a gang, and he was too good-natured to have enemies. He usually lost when he was matched up against Mikey, a handball whiz. Francisco, now 20, had played hundreds of handball games on the court between Hempstead High School and the Garden City golf course. Mikey Michael Alguera was also 15, the younger brother of a friend Francisco had known since middle school. ![]()
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