Halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento lies California’s forgotten country, vast swaths of land with populations fluctuating based on weather and how much water the state allows to flow to the region. Almost half of Mendota, Calif.’s population, oscillating around the 11,000 mark, lives under the poverty line. And a decade ago, MS-13 traveled from Los Angeles along Interstate 5 and then up rural State Route 33 to begin a yearslong reign of terror in the tiny town of Mendota.

MS-13, the ethnic Salvadoran street gang that began in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles and became a nation-crushing force back in the mother country, has become the bete noir President Trump loves to hate. In turn, the media’s loved to write it off. National newspapers nearly universally lambasted Trump for his focus on MS-13’s gang violence at his 2018 State of the Union. The New York Times, USA Today, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic have all slammed the president for “overstating” and politicizing the relatively minimal threat of MS-13.