The bloodthirsty MS-13 gang is even worse than authorities initially suspected — with a command structure akin to the Mafia and members who’ve set a new standard for viciousness, the outgoing head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division said Tuesday.
“Law enforcement did not realize how sophisticated they were at first,” Special Agent in Charge James Hunt told The Post in an exclusive interview one day before his mandatory retirement.
“Their command is structured and controlled a lot like organized crime.”
About 10,000 MS-13 members are spread across the United States, with more based in Central America — where the gang originated — and even Europe and the Far East, Hunt said.
“They have a leader who is based in El Salvador, and everybody all over the world answers to him,” he said.
The “Godfather”-like figure gets a cut of the profits generated by each MS-13 faction by selling narcotics, and — in another similarity to the Mafia — members can’t kill each other without approval from the gang’s leaders, Hunt said.
That prohibition doesn’t extend beyond MS-13, however, and gang members have distinguished themselves with a level of brutality that Hunt called the worst he’s seen during 36 years in law enforcement.
“Their acts of violence are unbridled,” he said.
“They’re just wild.”
Local examples of the gang’s bloodshed include the Long Island slayings of best friends Kayla Cuevas, 16, and Nisa Mickens, 15, who were beaten with baseball bats and hacked with machetes in 2016 following disputes over social media between Kayla and various MS-13 members and associates.
President Trump began warning about the danger posed by MS-13 during his campaign for the White House, and claimed this week that gang members were hidden in the migrant caravan now heading to the US through Mexico.
“They like cutting people up, slicing them,” Trump said during a rally in Texas on Monday.
In addition to MS-13, Hunt said America faced a major threat from fentanyl, which he called a “game changer” that was responsible for the majority of New York City’s 1,600 fatal overdoses last year.
“It’s much worse than crack cocaine was in the ’80s and ’90s,” he said.
“Way more people have died because of fentanyl.”
Hunt said the synthetic opioid, which is 100 times more potent than morphine, is typically smuggled into the US from Mexico in kilo-size bricks that are manufactured in China or the Dominican Republic.
Selling the drug is extremely lucrative, with a $5,000 investment able to return $1 million in profits when it’s sold on the streets, he said.
But the potency of fentanyl makes it hard for dealers to avoid killing their customers, because the people who cut and package it “just don’t know how powerful it is,” he said.
Hunt, who turns 60 on Thursday, is a former NYPD cop who followed his namesake father’s footsteps by joining the DEA — and rose to the same agency position held his late dad, James Hunt Sr., who worked on the famed “French Connection” drug case.
Hunt’s DEA career included undercover work investigating heroin trafficking during the 1980s, when he posed as “an Irish kid from The Bronx” who was willing to do dirty work for the mob, leading to the arrest of infamous Bonanno crime family hitman Thomas “Tommy Karate” Pitera.
Hunt also led a team of agents who found the dismembered remains of Pitera’s victims buried in the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge on Staten Island.
He later worked in Miami and Virginia before returning to New York in 2005 to head the Drug Enforcement Task Force, and was tapped to lead the DEA’s New York Division — the country’s largest — in 2014.
Hunt, who’s single and lives in New Jersey, is also going out on a high note, with Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman headed for trial in Brooklyn federal court next month after being extradited to the US on his watch.
“One thing I’ll miss is the people,” Hunt said. “The professionalism and camaraderie in New York City law enforcement is unparalleled.”