(NewsNation) — Federal prosecutors believe they have decimated what they characterize as the most dangerous and violent gang in Massachusetts, which is allegedly connected to at least 15 homicides and 30 attempted slayings since 2015.

The Trinitarios is a violent organization that targets young people for gang membership across several states and internationally by playing on their alliances to Dominican culture and patriotism, federal prosecutors say.

This week, 26 gang members or known associates were arrested and charged with racketeering conspiracy and drug trafficking offenses, leading to 19 attempted murders in recent years.

Authorities said Trinitarios members are also responsible for various assaults, armed robberies, kidnappings, weapons trafficking, extortion and witness tampering across the commonwealth.

Over the past two years, 56 Trinitarios members have been charged in Massachusetts alone, which U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said this week has decapitated the gang from operating in the region by dismantling the top of the group’s criminal organizational chart.

“We believe … that their entire leadership has been taken out,” Foley told reporters in Boston. “If they try to resurrect themselves, we will take them out again.”

She added, “For far too long, the Trinitarios have wreaked havoc and instilled fear in our communities. That ends today.”

Despite federal prosecutors’ confidence levels that authorities had dealt with violence linked to the Trinitarios in Massachusetts, the well-organized gang has a long history of resurfacing in other cities, including in New York, where officials previously believed they had ended the transnational criminal group’s reign of terror.

The decadeslong history of the Trinitarios transnational organization

The Trinitarios, also known as 3NI and the Trinitarians, were founded in 1993 after two Dominican nationals, Leonides Sierra and Julio Marine, were booked into Rikers Island in the Bronx in New York on murder charges, The New York Times reported in 2018, federal prosecutors say.

The two inmates faced harassment inside the prison from gang members, prompting them to establish the Trinitarios to protect themselves. The gang was named after three Dominican Republic revolutionaries: Juan Pablo Duarte, Matías Ramón Mella and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, who led the effort to secure the Dominican Republic’s independence from Haiti.

Once founded, the gang’s leaders adopted the motto “Dios, patria, y Libertad,” which translates to “God, homeland and liberty,” the report indicated. The two founders established gang colors as red, white and blue from the Dominican Republic’s flag and lime green as an homage to their home country.

However, some gang experts say the Trinitarios’ origins began well before Rikers Island and was founded in 1989 at a Washington Heights housing project, where it originated as a spin-off to another gang called “Dominicans Don’t Play.”

The Trinitarios grew out of the New York City prison system and spread across the city’s five boroughs and New York State’s correctional system, the report indicated. New sectors of the group were required to be sanctioned and follow a strict chain of command.

Those who strayed from rules established by the Trinitarios leadership were quickly dealt with and punished — often with violence carried out through the gang’s weapon of choice, the machete.

“I personally haven’t seen any organization like that in the other gangs that I have investigated,” New York City Police Det. Paul Jeselson told The New York Times.

How the Trinitarios have spread across the East Coast, US and internationally

The gang, mostly comprised of Dominican-born gang members representing various criminal organizations, has since spread across the eastern seaboard in places like Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware and Virginia, according to the Justice Department.

It’s also expanded into Midwestern states like Ohio and Illinois and south to Florida and Tennessee. The Trinitarios also operate internationally in the Caribbean, Europe and South America, all relying on the same strict rules for criminal patterns.

In addition to violent crimes carried out by gang members, the Trinitarios are also known for targeting rival gangs such as the Bloods, Crips and the Gangster Disciples over territory.

The Trinitarios recruit new members by targeting both Dominicans who are living legally in the United States as well as migrants from the Dominican Republic, Foley, the Massachusetts federal prosecutor, said this week.

Primarily, gang leaders recruit high school-age students by appealing to their shared Spanish-speaking abilities and Dominican culture and patriotism.

Local chapters established in each state follow a strict hierarchical structure. Each chapter includes its own president, vice president, councilors, warriors and soldiers — all of whom are responsible for various tasks as assigned by each state’s supreme leader.

Included in those duties are recruiting new members, disciplining fellow gang members who violate directives and collecting weekly dues that are added to a fund that supports illegal operations and provides financial aid to incarcerated gang members and their families.

New members are officially inducted into the gang after completing “missions” that often involve carrying out shootings and beatings, federal prosecutors said this week. In Boston, formal ceremonies were held where new members were “blessed” with special beaded necklaces to acknowledge their acceptance into the gang.

Although state and federal law enforcement, including the Department of Homeland Security, have collaborated to crack down on Trinitarios’ violence and criminal operations both within correctional facilities and on the streets, the gang’s growing numbers have made shutting the gang down completely nearly impossible.

In New York, federal prosecutors began securing convictions of 140 Trinitarios members and leaders by 2014, The New York Times reported. But while federal authorities celebrated the fact that they believed they had crippled the gang’s leadership, those who were tasked with going after the gang in New York said that new leaders emerged, allowing gang activity to begin all over again.

“These people revitalized the gang,” one DOJ official who spoke to the newspaper on the condition of anonymity said at the time.

What makes the Trinitarios criminal organization so dangerous?

Once local chapters are established, Trinitarios members and associates carry out brazen attacks, killings and other criminal activity, which is often posted on social media.

Foley, the Massachusetts U.S. attorney, said that the gang often boasts of violent acts, with members posting about their own affiliation and duties. She said that Trinitarios members often pose for photos of themselves flashing gang signs, carrying dangerous weapons and displaying large quantities of drugs, including suspected fentanyl.

Acts of violence against rival gangs are also recorded on music videos and posted as proof of the Trinitarios’ dangerous activities as warnings to rivals and other gang members who consider trying to interfere with the Dominican gang.

Alex Alonso, a Los Angeles-based gang researcher and former college professor, told NewsNation, however, that the Trinitarios’ actions are no different than other street gangs operating around the country and operate as low-rung operators from international drug traffickers.

Alonso says they are also similar to other gangs posting on social media, which is becoming a more common piece of evidence for investigators as they build cases like the ones this week in Boston.

Foley says the recordings also provided federal prosecutors with valuable insight and evidence that allowed them to build their case over the past two years.

“They also provide detailed insight into one of the most violent gangs in Massachusetts,” Foley said this week. “Through the investigation, we learned about the gang’s structure, their motivation, and their arrogance. They spoke openly and moved freely without fear of consequences until today.”

But Alonso says that the filing of RICO charges against young gang members may present an interesting challenge for federal prosecutors. Alonso said 1995 represented the first time that prosecutors began filing RICO charges – once specifically used routinely in organized crime and mafia cases – in relation to street crimes.

Despite the filing of those charges against street gangs, Alonso says that federal prosecutors have never been able to use those indictments to dismantle groups like the Trinitarios. He said some Los Angeles gangs have been faced RICO charges multiple times and remain active to this day.

RICO cases against street gangs have ramped up over the past five years, he said, with the results routinely not doing much to keep those criminal groups from continuing with their normal activities.

“So I scratch my head and wonder, what’s the purpose?,” Alonso said, adding that federal prosecutors continue to follow similar scripts in claiming victory over street crime.

“It’s all hyperbole because they say almost the same thing in every press conference across the country. They say, ‘We’re dismantling this gang ….it’s the same script. It’s the same thing and it doesn’t work. I don’t know if it’s a danger (to say). It just doesn’t work.”

Jeff Arnold is a national immigration enterprise reporter for NewsNation Digital, covering immigration-related issues from the border to cities across the country. Send him story ideas at tips.newsnationdigital@gmail.com.