Federal officials have booted a Guatemalan with known ties to the infamous MS-13 gang who spent years living under a fake name in Calgary and the U.S.

 
Luis Alberto Martinez Ventura was escorted home on May 24 following an immigration hearing, nearly nine years after first stepping foot on North American soil posing as a Mexican national.
 
His removal was hailed by Canada Border Services Agency officials who announced his deportation in a statement released on Friday.
 
“The CBSA places the highest priority on removal cases involving national security, organized crime, crimes against humanity and criminals,” wrote spokeswoman Lisa White.
 
Immigration officials said Ventura entered Canada in August 2008 using a Mexican passport and electoral card and was granted approval to visit until January, 2009.
 
Those officials didn’t catch up with Ventura until January when Calgary police arrested him on unrelated matters.
 
According to a transcript of the hearing, Ventura confessed at that time that he’d been living under a bogus name since 2002 when he first entered the U.S.
 
Intelligence gleaned by immigration officials indicated Ventura sported a history with the notorious Mara Salvatrucha — also known as MS-13 — a violent gang founded by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles during the 1980s.
 
The gang, the influence of which has spread across the Americas and counts between 30,000 and 50,000 members and associates among its ranks, has found itself behind several high-profile U.S. murders and drug cases in recent years.
 
While immigration officials couldn’t prove he was a member, an investigation found the man “had engaged in activity with that group that was part of a pattern of criminal activity,” board member Lynda Mackie said in the ruling, which
 
ordered he remain locked up until deportation.
 
“You have demonstrated in the past that your are adept at obtaining and using fraudulent identity documents and that you can live successfully underground undetected for a considerable period of time,” she said.
 
Ventura is permanently barred from returning to Canada.