Which U.S. cities and states have the highest concentration of MS-13 activity today?

1. The traditional strongholds: Los Angeles and the Northeast corridor

Scholarly fieldwork and federal summaries identify Los Angeles as the original U.S. incubator for MS‑13 and the New York/New Jersey area plus adjacent suburbs as persistent East Coast centers where multiple cliques and program structures have been observed, a pattern documented in multi‑year research and Department of Justice reporting ^{[5] [2] [1]}. Those sources show that Los Angeles remains a reference point for MS‑13’s U.S. footprint and that the East Coast cluster—centered on New York/New Jersey and spilling into Maryland and Virginia—hosts numerous cliques overseen by regional program heads, which concentrates violent activity and law‑enforcement attention there ^{[2] [1]}.

2. The Mid‑Atlantic and D.C. region: a verified concentration

Research projects that explicitly mapped active MS‑13 members singled out the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as one of three major U.S. locales for active membership and organization, and DOJ reporting lists Maryland and Virginia among the states with established MS‑13 cliques, indicating a sustained concentration of activity in the Mid‑Atlantic ^{[2] [1]}. Federal criminal‑justice products and task‑force reporting repeatedly cite the D.C. region as a site where transnational links, clique coordination and both local and interstate criminality have been observed, which explains recurring federal enforcement operations there ^{[3] [1]}.

3. Nationwide footprint, but diffuse and uneven

Official statements and archived federal briefings emphasize that MS‑13 activity has been observed across a very broad geography—historically reported in “at least 40 states and the District of Columbia”—yet that presence ranges from a single law‑enforcement observation to entrenched cliques with organized criminal capacity, meaning broad geographic reach does not equate to uniform intensity ^{[4] [1]}. Analysts and DOJ products caution that MS‑13 functions as a network of semi‑autonomous cliques rather than a centralized cartel, so concentration must be measured clique‑by‑clique and city‑by‑city rather than assumed from national headlines ^{[5] [3]}.

4. Conflicting narratives and political uses of “concentration” data

Some advocacy and policy groups frame MS‑13 as resurging and tied to immigration enforcement gaps—arguments advanced in policy pieces that link sanctuary policies to gang spread—while human‑rights and regional analysts warn against exaggeration and note that U.S. operations have often found most arrestees are U.S. citizens, and that there is “no MS‑13 infestation” across the country, illustrating a contested debate about scale and cause ^{[6] [7] [8]}. Federal reports and academic studies provide more granular findings about where cliques are established (California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and the D.C./L.A. metros) and urge caution about conflating political rhetoric with law‑enforcement evidence ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

5. What the reporting cannot resolve definitively

Public federal and academic sources give a clear shortlist of higher‑concentration places—Los Angeles, the New York/New Jersey metro area, and the Washington, D.C./Maryland/Virginia region—but they do not release a single, up‑to‑date ranked list of city‑by‑city membership counts; the decentralized nature of MS‑13 and differing agency definitions of “presence” limit precise, public quantification ^{[1] [3] [5]}. Reporting therefore supports identifying those metro areas and states as the most consistently documented concentrations, while also acknowledging a wide but uneven national footprint that is both operationally and politically contested ^{[2] [4] [7]}.