How do the cross and skull translate to 13?
Criminal tattoos are often coded to represent abbreviations, numbers and letters of the alphabet. Particularly for members in the US who want to avoid explicit gang affiliation that would hold up in a US court, whereas members in other countries might have more explicit tattoos. The aryan brotherhood for example often uses a shamrock shape with the number 12, because 12 -> AB, the Aryan Brotherhood abbreviation. Or simply having symbols that stand in for letters or numbers by looking like them.
His knuckles have a marijuana leaf, a smiley face with Xs for eyes, a christian cross with a very short horizontal stroke and a skull.
The marijuana leaf stands for M, as the spanish word is also Marijuana
The smiley face stands for S, as the spanish word for smile is Sonrisa
The cross is simply a 1, because that's what it looks like, made more purposeful by the shorter horizontal line to resemble a 1
The skull is a 3, both because the spanish word is Calavera/Craneo, C = 3, as well as made more purposeful because the skull tattoo resembles a 3, you can trace a 3 in the top, nose and bottom lines.
The guy was caught with known MS13 members with drugs and cash while wearing MS13 clothing, identified as MS13 by an informant, and caught human trafficking people from the border in a vehicle owned by another convicted MS13 human trafficker. The idea that his knuckle tattoos would somehow just coincidentally form the letters MS in abbreviated pictographs and numbers 13 in appearance, is not remotely believable. Its like claiming the Azov battalion guys just have buddhist peace and bavarian eagle tattoos.