Biography

Alex Sanchez is the Executive Director of the Los Angeles branch of Homies Unidos, an organization in the Pico Union and Koreatown area of Los Angeles with a sister organization in San Salvador. Alex is a former gang member who, after serving prison time in California, was deported back to El Salvador in 1994. While in El Salvador he was targeted by Death Squads operating in his home town. He returned to Los Angeles committed to changing his life for the better. In 1998, he started implementing programs geared to helping youth in gangs. In 2000, he was targeted by the LAPD’s Rampart police division and became part of the infamous Rampart scandal, Alex was freed later that year and in 2002 won Political Asylum. 

He has continued doing the violence prevention and intervention work in Los Angeles, receiving countless awards and recognition from the City of Los Angeles, Organizations and Foundations. Then on June 24, 2009, he was taken into custody by FBI agents, Sheriffs and LAPD as part of a 24 people Federal indictment. He was released, after seven months, from the Metropolitan Federal Detention Center on a $2,000,000 bond that the community brought forward after the outrage of his arrest. After 3 ½ years of his struggle, the U.S. Attorney General submitted their own motion to dismissed the case to avoid responding to our allegations of misconduct, all charges were dropped. Alex continues working in the predominately Central America community of Los Angeles; He has traveled throughout the United States doing presentations in Juvenile Halls, Universities and has worked with organizations to create plans that address youth violence. In 2005, He testified in the United Nations to denounce the Government in Honduras for two massacres that happened in El Porvenir prison that left 86 inmates dead in 2004 and 106 burned alive in Tegucigalpa Prison in 2005. Most recently Alex was a consultant to a play called, Placas, The Most Dangerous Tattoo. The play was inspired by Alex Sanchez’s story.