Suffolk, County New York District Attorney Timothy Sini appeared Saturday on Fox News to discuss the major international arrests of nearly 100 gang [...]]]>
Suffolk, County New York District Attorney Timothy Sini appeared Saturday on Fox News to discuss the major international arrests of nearly 100 gang leaders and associates:
MS-13 is justly ranked as one of the worst, most bloodthirsty gangs, since a murder is required for membership, and machetes are a traditional weapon for their frequent homicides.
They tend to prey upon their own kind, although not exclusively: Americans who get on their bad side may be killed.
Below, high school friends Nisa Mickens (left) and Kayla Cuevas (right) were hacked to death by MS-13 gangsters using machetes and baseball bats after Cuevas angered some gangsters on social media and Mickens got in the way.
President Trump invited both sets of parents to his 2018 State of the Union speech.
Keep in mind that President Obama knowingly admitted MS-13 gang members to America with his irresponsible policy of open borders to Central Americans. It was totally predictable that when Obama allowed many thousands to Central aliens to escape gang violence in their homelands, the gangsters would accompany them to the US because that’s what always happens: open borders for victims work for perps as well.
In July, 22 MS-13 members were arrested for a series of murders, and 19 were illegal aliens.
Hopefully future presidents will care more for the public safety of Americans than diversity in immigration.
]]>New York DA on historic MS-13 bust: ‘the fight continues’, Fox News, December 21, 2019
Friday’s announcement of the largest-ever MS-13 crackdown is a “huge blow” against the gang but the fight is not over, Suffolk, County New York District Attorney Timothy Sini said Saturday
Appearing on “Fox & Friends: Weekend” with hosts Pete Hegseth and Emily Compagno, Sini confirmed that 96 MS-13 gang members and associates were charged with significant crimes in the historic bust including murder, conspiracy, drug distribution, and assault. The ages of those arrested range from 16 to 59 and include U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants.
The developments come following a two-year investigation involving law enforcement from the local to the federal level in Suffolk County, one of the gangs’ longtime hotbeds.
Sources told the New York Post that most of the arrests were made Thursday and Friday morning.
“And, as a result of intelligence generated throughout the investigation, law enforcement made over 230 arrests throughout the world including in New York, throughout the United States, and in El Salvador,” Sini said. “This was a global operation.”
Throughout the investigation, authorities recovered drugs in gang members’ possession such as cocaine and fentanyl, as well as handguns and more than $200,000 in cash.
Sini said the use of social media analysis was crucial and they obtained wiretaps on over 215 phones.
“And, I have to say: law enforcement did such a tremendous job because, as they were gathering intelligence, they would use that intelligence in real-time to stop acts of violence and they put their lives on the line to stop those acts of violence,” he said.
“This is a huge blow,” Sini stated. “This decimates the leadership on Long Island.”
MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, recruits young teenagers from El Salvador and Honduras, though many gang members were born in the U.S. The gang has been blamed for dozens of killings since January 2016 across a wide swath of New York’s Long Island – where Suffolk County is — the Los Angeles area and the D.C. suburbs. (Continues)
Local open-border types brought their signs showing support for lawbreaking foreigners rather than public safety for the community.
The meeting was prompted by the terrible murder of Bambi Larson, [...]]]>
Local open-border types brought their signs showing support for lawbreaking foreigners rather than public safety for the community.
The meeting was prompted by the terrible murder of Bambi Larson, stabbed to death in her home by an unlawful foreigner, reported here last month: San Jose Woman Is Murdered by Salvadoran Illegal Who Was Protected by California Sanctuary Policy
The accused killer had a long criminal record including previous deportation, and the police chief said that he could have been turned over to ICE half a dozen times.
There was no question that the perp is a really bad character, and a prompt deportation may well have saved Larson’s life. Yet there was strong support for general non-enforcement of immigration laws in the meeting, even against violent felons. Larson’s cousin, Rick Loek, was taken aback by some of the crowd’s preference, noting, “I’m surprised anybody would argue in favor of keeping a violent criminal in this country.”
Meanwhile, California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, is already campaigning against President Trump with a swing through El Salvador, apparently because 680,000 Salvadorans reside in his state. A little early to be looking for a new job, no?
But back to the preventable murder in San Jose:
]]>Santa Clara County supervisors vote to explore changes to sanctuary policy, San Jose Mercury News, April 9, 2019
After tense seven-and-a-half hour hearing with emotional public testimony, supervisors direct county staff and law enforcement to study feasibility of notifying ICE of jail releases of undocumented immigrants with violent criminal histories
SAN JOSE – The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 Tuesday to explore ways to soften the county’s sanctuary policy, allowing local law enforcement to notify immigration authorities when an undocumented immigrant with a history of violent or other serious crime is released from jail.
The vote, shortly before 6 p.m., came after a seven-and-a-half hour meeting where emotions ran high and tempers sometimes flared, as the public weighed in on changing the policy, which currently forbids such notification.
More than 300 people showed up for the meeting, forcing officials to close the doors and send the overflow crowd to another room, where they could watch the debate on a television screen. Supervisors Mike Wasserman, Dave Cortese, Joseph Simitian and Cindy Chavez voted to approve the two proposals put before the board, which authorize staff and local law enforcement to investigate possible mechanisms for the policy shift and report back within 60 days.
“I am in favor of removing individuals who have committed serious and violent crimes, and have been convicted of doing so, from our communities however and whenever possible,” Wasserman said, stressing that his plan would not remove sanctuary protections against civil detainer requests from immigration agents.
Supervisor Susan Ellenberg was the lone opposition vote against the proposals, saying they would needlessly change “a policy that is working,” and argued that immigrants were being scapegoated for fueling crime when studies show they commit fewer crimes on average than U.S.-born residents.
She added that with any sanctuary policy changes, “public safety may be negligibly impacted but the impact on tens of thousands of vulnerable, law abiding residents and on vulnerable children in our county would be substantial, traumatic and lasting.”
The move to modify the county’s policy came in the wake of the brutal killing of 59 year-old Bambi Larson in her South San Jose home in February, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local law enforcement leaders proposed an amendment to the policy that would allow notification in cases where an undocumented immigrant who had committed crimes of violence or other serious offenses was about to be freed. County police leaders and the District Attorney have already drafted language for such a change.
Santa Clara County’s policy is stricter than state law, which bars law enforcement officials from aiding ICE by detaining undocumented immigrants but allows notification about inmates’ release. A majority of speakers at Tuesday’s meeting, however, appeared to oppose any alteration to a policy they see as a beacon for other counties.
Katiuska Pimentel Vargas, an undocumented San Jose resident and organizer with the Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network, told the supervisors that for immigrants already fearful of authorities, there is no middle ground for local police to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“You can’t be pro-ICE and be an ally of my community,” Pimentel said.
The fallout from Larson’s killing on Feb. 28 — and the subsequent arrest of Carlos Arevalo-Carranza, 24, a native of El Salvador who, according to ICE officials, was the subject of six civil detainer requests denied by the county — has created fault lines in a liberal community where views on immigration have been relatively homogenous.
Rick Loek, a cousin of Larson, said he was surprised by how controversial the policy proposal change had become.
“This is a game of Russian roulette,” he said. “You don’t know when we release one of these people what’s going to happen.”
“I’m surprised anybody would argue in favor of keeping a violent criminal in this country,” he said. “And I want to be careful with my words — it’s not, ‘throw everybody out.’ Our country was founded on welcoming people here.” (Continues)
The Times article showed a police officer investigating a crime in “a part of San Salvador controlled by MS-13.”
Naturally, Trump-bashing is integral to the story. Though alleged in the article, the president has never said that “all Salvadorans are gang members” as far as I can tell. In fact, he is sending $750,000 in US taxpayer money to the Central American crime hot spots to fight local violence.
A 2017 Department of Justice Fact Sheet there were more than 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the United States.
It should be remembered that President Obama knowingly admitted MS-13 gang members to America with his reckless policy of open borders to Central American aliens. It was totally predictable that when Obama allowed many thousands to Centrals to escape gang violence in their homelands, the gangsters would accompany them to the US.
Central American murder rates make Mexico look positively peaceful by comparison.
So yes, open borders have admitted thousands of diverse criminals to America. Uncontrolled immigration from Central America doesn’t rescue foreigners; it brings the whole swath of Centrals to the US, including criminals who prey largely on their fellow countrymen. And we taxpayers are hit with the criminal justice costs.
The Times story was reprinted by WRAL:
]]>A Conflicted War: MS-13, Trump and America’s Stake in El Salvador’s Security, By Ali Watkins and Meridith Kohut, New York Times, December 10, 2018
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — On a cloudy afternoon, Mayra Ayala shepherded her family along the winding footpaths of a hillside cemetery in Ilobasco, a town about 35 miles from the capital. The group of nine clambered over dozens of brightly painted mausoleums while descending to a purple tomb topped with three crosses.
Two years had passed since Ayala’s husband, José, and two of her sons — Vladimir, 21, and Douglas, 19 — were murdered by members of the street gang MS-13. José Ayala, a community leader in one of the gang’s strongholds, had routinely spoken with Ilobasco’s mayor and police officials, who were trained by U.S. advisers to build rapport with residents.
But to MS-13 leaders, those conversations signaled that José Ayala was an informant — an allegation his family denied. One morning in March 2016, they ambushed Ayala and his sons at the family’s tile workshop.
Mayra Ayala, 45, and most of her children are now in hiding, moving between homes in their old neighborhood. They are supported by her son Alexander, who survived the slaughter and is seeking asylum in the United States. She is ambivalent about America’s involvement in her country: One of its initiatives to combat gang violence destroyed her family, yet in many ways it has made the neighborhood safer.
“Talking to the police is a death sentence,” Ayala said. “But it is good to have the police at the districts, because if they weren’t here, we wouldn’t be alive.”
The United States has stepped up its engagement in the country over the past two years, dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars and dozens of law enforcement and military personnel to fighting the violent gangs that send so many Salvadorans fleeing to the U.S. border. The goal is to create a self-sufficient Salvadoran justice system. But the consequences of the effort are difficult to assess.
U.S. advisers are training the police officers who arrest gang members. U.S. dollars are building the prisons that hold them. At a U.S. facility in San Salvador, detectives are learning how to investigate crimes. It is part of a plan to send $750 million into Central America’s violent Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — and one that, U.S. and Salvadoran officials say privately, would be disastrous to end.
President Donald Trump, though, has periodically threatened to walk away. He views MS-13 as a dangerous force in the United States but has expressed skepticism about the efforts to help root it out in El Salvador. Little more than a month ago, he pledged to pull U.S. support from the region.
Trump’s wavering commitment and fiery rhetoric — including claims that most Salvadoran immigrants are gang members in disguise — have at times endangered the fragile inroads his embassy has made in a region where U.S. involvement, dating back decades, has historically been viewed with suspicion.
“Not all Salvadorans belong to a gang; we are not MS-13,” Ayala said. “We are just poor.”
“President Trump is right to attack the MS,” she added. “We Salvadorans do need his support.” (Continues)
Discussing the caravan invaders, the AG remarked:
KEN PAXTON: I don’t think Trump is going to let them in. If you look [...]]]>
Discussing the caravan invaders, the AG remarked:
KEN PAXTON: I don’t think Trump is going to let them in. If you look at what he is relying on, it’s the same law he relied on with the travel ban which says that he specifically has the authority to limit entry of any class of nonresident aliens that he views as detrimental to the country. In this case, that’s what he’s relying on. The Supreme Court upheld that in a recent case in June, Trump versus Hawaii, and they said basically the president could limit the scope, how long somebody came in, when they come in, whether they come in and the conditions of how they come in.
So he’s perfectly within his rights to stop them from coming into this country, including getting asylum.
Trump v. Hawaii was a win for the president and underlined his power to block immigrants from hostile nations entering the country. He took the action via Presidential Proclamation 9645, about which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Court’s opinion, “The Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority.”
Below, many pictures of the Honduran caravan show the border busters carrying their home nation flag, clearly indicating invasion. This one spanning a whole road (!) is from Al Jazeera.
The caravan clearly needs to be stopped, since its success will incite many more Central Americans to escape their poor countries, particularly Honduras (population 9 million), Guatemala (population 17 million) and El Salvador (population 6 million).
Here’s the video with Ken Paxton and Shannon Bream:
]]>Readers learn that the Times’ hero of the story, Salvadoran Christopher Cruz, apparently spent $12,500 to reach America’s welfare offices, though the exact sum is not clear. That’s a great deal of money for a [...]]]>
Readers learn that the Times’ hero of the story, Salvadoran Christopher Cruz, apparently spent $12,500 to reach America’s welfare offices, though the exact sum is not clear. That’s a great deal of money for a poor unskilled Central American which he obviously believes he can somehow mooch back in the wealthy United States.
Additionally interesting were facts about the big picture of people smuggling, in particular that “migrants paid $500 million a year to groups fueling violence and instability in the region.” That’s a lot of money going to cartels — no wonder they are so powerful.
Imagine if all that money and human energy were repurposed to reform in the home countries. There used to be revolutions in Latin America, but now it’s just easier for young men, like the 22-year-old subject of the Times article, to break into the United States to steal jobs and benefits from citizen taxpayers. Illegal immigration is theft.
True, Central America is a third-world hellhole, but all its millions of unhappy people cannot come here and spread the poison of lawlessness in this country.
To be fair, the United States has been unduly generous to foreign lawbreakers who can manage to stay legally or illegally, a policy that constituted a human magnet.
Below, President Obama’s deluxe Karnes Detention Center for illegal aliens included flat-screen TVs, a hair salon and brand new clothes — at a cost to taxpayers of $140 per day per foreigner.
So President Trump is correct to apply severe negative reinforcement to counteract years of Obama’s pampering of lawbreakers. But the Republican-run Congress is not serious about immigration enforcement, otherwise it would have enacted universal E-Verify.
Back to the New York Times article (reprinted), note the communist-style entitlement felt by the Salvadoran who says, “They can send as many soldiers to the border as they want, but a people’s need and desire for a better life is stronger.”
]]>What It Costs to Be Smuggled Across the U.S. Border, Examle.org, June 30, 2018
MATAMOROS, Mexico – Shortly before dawn one Sunday last August, a driver in an S.U.V. picked up Christopher Cruz at a stash house in this border city near the Gulf of Mexico. The 22-year-old from El Salvador was glad to leave the one-story building, where smugglers kept bundles of cocaine and marijuana alongside their human cargo, but he was anxious about what lay ahead.
The driver deposited Mr. Cruz at an illegal crossing point on the edge of the Rio Grande. A smuggler took a smartphone photograph to confirm his identity and sent it using WhatsApp to a driver waiting to pick him up on the other side of the frontier when – if – he made it across.
The nearly 2,000-mile trip had already cost Mr. Cruz’s family more than $6,000 and brought him within sight of Brownsville, Tex. The remaining 500 miles to Houston – terrain prowled by the United States Border Patrol as well as the state and local police – would set them back another $6,500.
It was an almost inconceivable amount of money for someone who earned just a few dollars a day picking coffee beans back home. But he wasn’t weighing the benefits of a higher-paying job. He was fleeing violence and what he said was near-certain death at the hands of local gangs.
“There’s no other option,” Mr. Cruz said. “The first thought I had was, ‘I just need to get out of here at whatever cost.’”
The stretch of southwest border where he intended to cross has become the epicenter of the raging battle over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. One clear consequence of the tightening American border and the growing perils getting there is that more and more desperate families are turning to increasingly sophisticated smuggling operations to get relatives into the United States.
Mr. Cruz’s story provides an unusually detailed anatomy of the price of the journey. The money paid for a network of drivers who concealed him in tractor-trailers and minibuses, a series of houses where he hid out, handlers tied to criminal organizations who arranged his passage, and bribes for Mexican police officers to look the other way as he passed.
Even with his family’s payment, he slept amid filth and vermin. He watched guides abandon some migrants who could not keep up, and guards prod others to become drug mules. Sometimes the smugglers identified him by a numeric code, other times by an assumed name. But as often as not, they simply called him “the package,” to be moved for profit like an illicit good.
For Mr. Cruz, it was worth it. “They can build as many walls as they want,” he said, referring to American officials. “They can send as many soldiers to the border as they want, but a people’s need and desire for a better life is stronger.”
President Trump and his supporters have called for greater vigilance along the border to keep out people like Mr. Cruz, a low-skilled worker who followed in the path of other family members who also arrived illegally, and who hopes those left behind will join him.
Pledging to halt illegal immigration, Mr. Trump has pushed for a 1,000-mile wall, ordered National Guard units to the border and encouraged workplace roundups of undocumented immigrants, which had largely been curtailed during the Obama years.
But as the number of Central Americans arriving at the southern border or sneaking across it has surged in recent months, the administration has embraced even tougher measures: “zero tolerance” for those arriving illegally, by requiring criminal prosecutions; family separation, a policy from which Mr. Trump was forced to retreat after images of children wailing for their parents provoked a public outcry; and eliminating domestic violence and gang violence as grounds for granting asylum to migrants who arrived at legal crossing points.
(Continues)
Never forget that the Obama Administration Knowingly Admitted MS-13 Gangsters to America because open borders were a big thing for his administration.
The resulting gang [...]]]>
Never forget that the Obama Administration Knowingly Admitted MS-13 Gangsters to America because open borders were a big thing for his administration.
The resulting gang explosion has caused preventable crime including murders in areas where the MS-13 killers reside, and endangering American kids in schools that the gangsters attend.
President Trump invited parents of illegal alien crime victims to his first State of the Union speech, giving special attention to the MS-13 murder victims.
Tucker Carlson has been following the MS-13 problem, even visiting El Salvador last year, and he recently interviewed a top cop about the escalation. The gang’s message is they intend to murder police — “just like in El Salvador.”
This is where open borders have gotten America.
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Meanwhile MS-13 has been terrorizing ordinary people — mostly immigrants, by the way — in this country for years. It’s the deadliest gang in America and it seems to be turning its sights against American law enforcement. That’s not our take, that’s what they’re saying in recent weeks.
Long Island police have arrested several gang members and according to informants, leaders are telling their foot soldiers quote “it is time to take the streets back and shoot a cop like we do in El Salvador.”
They shoot a lot of cops in El Salvador: they run the country.
Patrick Ryder is commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department; he joins us tonight. So our understanding of MS-13 is up until now they’ve committed a lot of crimes, a number of high-profile killings, but mostly they haven’t targeted law enforcement. You think that’s changing
PARICK RYDER: Well we got our threat last Wednesday: they decided that they were going to put out notice to foot soldiers that you were going to take a cop’s life — just like they do in El Salvador.
CARLSON: So why the change?
RYDER: They don’t like the fact that we’ve increased our enforcement. We’re going after the MS-13 and all our gangs out here in Long Island. So from the increased enforcement, they decided they were going to act back. Well in return, we’re gonna act back.
CARLSON: Where are these people coming from?
RYDER: Most of them are crossing from the borders of both Mexico and Texas. They find their way up into the New York area where there is work for most migrant workers, but again those who don’t join the gangs, they get threatened by the gangs to join them, and they go after the young kids and try to flip them.
(Continues)
A Fox News report on Tuesday noted that a decline in prosecutions in the nineties and the gang’s recruitment of illegal alien minors here have led to a resurgence. Furthermore, reporter William La Jeunesse remarked that “it’s rare” for MS-13 members to be US citizens, and many are held on immigration violations as a result.
The following map shows MS-13 crime locales in 22 states since 2012:
Never forget that part of the reason for the spread of the MS-13 gang was President Obama’s encouragement of illegal aliens from Central America to flock here en masse. And so they did, including many criminals among the thousands of unaccompanied minors welcomed at the time. As immigration scholar Jessica Vaughan observed, “But when the gang leadership decided to launch a more concerted effort to enlarge in the United States, it was able to take advantage of the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policies for unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border to move in younger members from Central America.”
In February, Vaughan authored a sobering Center for Immigration Studies report, MS-13 Resurgence: Immigration Enforcement Needed to Take Back Our Streets which should be required reading for every member of Congress.
Here are more details about the gang arrests in Las Vegas:
]]>Las Vegas: MS-13 Gang Responsible for 10 Murders in Last Year, Breitbart.com, March 26, 2018
The violent El Salvadorian MS-13 gang is responsible for at least ten murders in Clark County, Nevada, Sheriff Joe Lombardo announced on Monday.
Lombardo said during the news conference that two of the murders by MS-13 occurred in 2017, while the other eight took place this year. All the murders by the gang occurred within a 12-month span, with the latest murder happening less than a week ago, Lombardo confirmed.
“The suspects involved in these crimes are extremely violent and killed their victims over as little as identifying with another gang or participating in street level narcotic sales,” Lombardo said. “All the victims were either shot or stabbed numerous times.”
Lombardo said his sheriff’s department is “confident” that the MS-13 gang members involved in the murders have been located and arrested.
Another official said one victim that had been shot and stabbed multiple times was a former MS-13 gang member. Weeks later, police discovered another murder victim of the gang who had been shot and stabbed. He too was a current or former MS-13 gang member.
The other victims, according to police, were involved with Mexican gangs.
In late 2017, Breitbart News reported how about one-third of the 215 MS-13 gang members arrested that month across the U.S. were unaccompanied minors who had illegally crossed into the country and were later resettled in the country.
(Continues)
An underlying theme of the meeting was the inability of current laws to do the job of protecting [...]]]>
An underlying theme of the meeting was the inability of current laws to do the job of protecting the public from savage, relentless MS-13 gangsters. A big problem is the situation where illegal aliens can show up and lie saying they are seeking asylum, and the government has to let them in — which is no way to run a border.
Many of these young men are illegal aliens from El Salvador who end up in local high schools which they then terrorize. That’s how the two teenaged girls were killed on overrun Long Island whom President Trump highlighted in his State of the Union speech.
After welcoming all the participants in the meeting by name, the president sketched out the problem:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: MS-13 recruits through our broken immigration system, violating our borders. And it just comes right through — whenever they want to come through, they come through. It’s much tougher now since we’ve been there, but we need much better border mechanisms and much better border security. We need the wall; we’re going to get the wall. If we don’t have the wall, we’re never going to solve this problem. And I’ve gone to the top people. Many of these people are at the table right now, including this group. And without the wall, it’s not going to work.
During my State of the Union, I called on Congress to close the immigration loopholes that have allowed this deadly gang to break so easily into our country. My administration has identified three priorities. We went through and looked very closely. We’ve identified three priorities for creating a safe, modern, and lawful immigration system: securing the border, ending chain migration, and cancelling the terrible visa lottery.
We’ve been discussing it, we’ve been talking about it. We’re talking about it in Congress. We’re talking about DACA and how we can work that out. And I think the Democrats don’t want to make a deal, but we’ll find out.
As Congress considers immigration reform, it’s essential that we listen to the law enforcement professionals in this room today. . .
SECRETARY NIELSEN: Yes, Mr. President, thank you for hosting this roundtable today on MS-13. As you know, it’s the first gang dangerous enough to be classified as a transnational criminal organization.
We’ve talked at length of the devastating destruction and violence that it causes in our communities, and we’re here today to hear form a variety of folks who work every day to combat this.
First, I’d just like to say it’s my privilege to be here with the men and women of DHS and DOJ who make it their job every day to fight this and other violence coming across our borders, and also, to be joined by members of Congress who have shown great leadership. We thank you for that and always for your support of DHS and DOJ. So thank you all.
In your recently announced framework, as you know, you asked Congress to close loopholes that you just talked about. So when we talk about MS-13, we have two or three main loopholes.
The first is, we have an inadmissibility problem, meaning that when they come to our border, I have to let them in. I cannot keep them out by virtue of them being in a gang. Once we catch them and detain them, I cannot remove them by virtue of them being in a gang.
(Continues)
You can read the whole White House transcript of the event: Protecting American Communities from the Violence of MS-13, February 6, 2018
Or watch the video:
]]>The bad news [...]]]>
The bad news is that increased enforcement has not eliminated returnees. Breitbart noted (6/22), Deported MS-13 Gangsters Keep Sneaking Back Across U.S. Border. Apparently we need to build jails that are less comfy than the accommodations back in their El Salvador homeland.
MS-13 gangsters love the crime opportunities that America affords. like terrorizing communities on Long Island with murders of young people.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on June 21 to explore the issue: “The MS-13 Problem: Investigating Gang Membership, its Nexus to Illegal Immigration, and Federal Efforts to End the Threat”. The entire hearing may be watched on C-SPAN.
Chairman Charles Grassley gave a tough opening statement, including a mention that President Obama knowingly admitted MS-13 gangsters into the country.
]]>Grassley Statement on the MS-13 Gang Problem, Its Nexus to Illegal Immigration and Federal Efforts to End the Threat, June 21, 2017
The topic of today’s hearing involves the MS-13 crisis that’s growing and spreading in communities across our nation.
The atrocities of these criminals are not new. This group has existed since the 1980s, and has made a reputation for itself as a perpetrator of extreme—and often gruesome—violence. This organization has been dubbed the world’s “most dangerous gang,” and some say it could be a terrorist organization. But, you wouldn’t expect anything less from a group whose motto is “kill, rape, and control.”
Unfortunately, over the past two years, this terrifying motto has become a vicious reality for many communities across our nation. So far this year, the gang has been publicly linked to dozens of high-profile killings, rapes, and assaults across the country, from the Washington D.C. metro area to Houston, Texas. Undoubtedly, there are many more that simply haven’t been reported.
Let me give the Committee just a few examples of this group’s absolute brutality and inhumanity.
• MS-13 has been responsible for nearly 20 murders on Long Island since 2010, with victims including high-school age children as young as 16. The group is also considered responsible for an additional 32 violent acts, including 8 attempted murders.
• In January, two gang members, both of whom are unauthorized immigrants, lured a 22 year old man from New Jersey to Maryland with the promise of sex, where they butchered him and left him in the woods near Gaithersburg, MD to rot.
• In March, two MS-13 members were charged with kidnapping and sexually assaulting three teenage girls for several weeks, and eventually murdering one of them in what has been described as a “satanic ritual.”
• In March and April, a string of MS-13 murders occurred across southern Virginia, with perhaps the most graphic being the murder of 17-year-old Raymond Wood. According to reports. Wood’s body was found face down in the road, and the MS-13 suspects had cut his hands and throat before stabbing him over 16 times.
While these examples are horrifying, they are far from isolated. According to the Department of Justice, MS-13 regularly conducts gang activity in at least forty states and the District of Columbia, and their violence touches nearly every major community in America.
What’s even more troubling than the recent surge of MS-13 gang violence is the fact the organization has a new, and more disturbing, recruitment strategy: targeting unaccompanied alien children. Let me tell you the story of one such child who was targeted by MS-13, and ultimately lost his life to their violence.
As The Washington Post reported last Friday afternoon, Danny Centeno-Miranda was just 16 years old when he was apprehended at the Border. He traveled to the United States without his parents, and like other minors, he was sent by the federal government to live with a sponsor—in this case an uncle—in an American community.
Danny was enrolled in a local school, where he was, according to reports, “sucked into” tensions between MS-13 and rival gangs. This tension eventually led MS-13 gang leaders in El Salvador to order Danny’s assassination, and he was shot to death at a school bus stop one morning.
Danny’s tragic story is an all too common example of MS-13’s ruthless targeting of children. It is well-known that MS-13 actively targets and recruits children as young as 8 years old. Unaccompanied minors are particularly prime candidates for gang recruitment. Their illegal status and Central American heritage alone make them vulnerable targets for MS-13 recruitment efforts. While their illegal status and Central American heritage are a key factor in MS-13’s targeting, without a doubt the failures of the current system for handling these children is also to blame. The current system is fraught with abuse, systematic errors, and a lack of effective cooperation.
Today we will hear from the agencies that share responsibility for allowing these children to fall through the cracks and become targets for MS-13 recruitment. To help us get to the bottom of this crisis, we have asked representatives from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security to testify today.
Independent reports have found that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has allowed many MS-13 gang members to enter the United States. According the Whistleblower documents obtained by Chairman Johnson, the Obama Administration knowingly released at least 16 known MS-13 members into communities after their apprehension. Many of these members were UACs.
Once UACs are apprehended, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is supposed to find these children an appropriate sponsor. Often, these sponsors themselves are in the country illegally, and many of them have criminal backgrounds. Because of the lack of post-release oversight, many children have been placed in dangerous situations, including illegal working environments and in some cases even prostitution rings.
This precarious combination of events—trafficking to and apprehension at the United States border, and placement with inappropriate sponsors— makes UACs vulnerable to gang recruitment. With promises of a cultural community and an escape from often harrowing and isolating living conditions at home, MS-13 has become an attractive option for too many minors. In spite of ample evidence that UACs are a prime target for MS-13 recruitment, none of the government agencies here today have any statistics about how many of the more than 10,000 gang members in our country entered and were recruited as UACs. The end result of the government’s total failure to establish an efficient process and meaningful oversight of the placement of these children has led to the current MS-13 crisis. Today’s hearing is a first step in plotting a path forward to end it.
Throughout the course of this hearing we’re going to explore how CBP and ORR can better cooperate to ensure the safe and proper placement of UACs, and to decimate MS-13 recruitment incentives. We’re also going to hear what steps Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice are taking to eliminate this organization on the back end.
At the end of this hearing, I fully expect the government witnesses to have given this Committee a better understanding of what needs to be—and must be—done to end this threat. Too many innocent American and immigrant lives are at stake.
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Tucker remarked about the presence of so many people protesting the Sessions appearance even though he was there to fight gang violence. Most of the signs available to see online were generic retreads of the same old open-borders crap, probably pulled out of a closet and dusted off.
More appropriate images would be photos of the crime victims, like high school girls Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas brutally murdered by MS-13 gangsters. Otherwise, people might get the idea that open-borders lefties support violent foreign criminals. Perish the thought!
Here’s the interview from Friday:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the next step? Simply talking about MS-13 won’t beat them. Tim Sini is Police Commissioner for Suffolk County on Long Island and he joins us tonight. . . Why has MS-13 grown so much in the last 10 years?
TIM SINI: There’s likely a variety of factors: there’s no question that MS-13 preys on the immigrant community. In fact they in particular prey on unaccompanied children who come to this country illegally, then are placed in our communities, and the Suffolk County Police Department working in collaboration with our federal partners is dedicated to decimating this gang.
CARLSON: Are the feds going to help you?
SINI: Absolutely
CARLSON: Okay you’re confident the Attorney General’s announcement today means progress in the fight against MS-13.
SINI: Whenever you have the top law enforcement official in the country come to your community and commit to eradicating a dangerous gang such as MS-13 and then ask local officials how can we help, that’s a good day for your community. We had a very productive discussion today about law enforcement issues, about how the federal government can further assist us in our mission of eradicating MS-13, and several specific requests were discussed, several specific topics were discussed. It was a great meeting. We had the the heads of all the local departments in the room, we had our federal partners there and of course the Attorney General and his team.
CARLSON: Right, so I don’t know how far you are to be totally candid since we’re on TV and you’re still holding office, but it seems like politics is playing a pretty ugly role in all this, and you have protesters by the side of the road accusing the federal government of cracking down on all immigrants when they’re going after one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the country — does that distort your ability to be able to address this as it as a as a criminal matter?
SINI: There’s no question that politics unfortunately creeps into the discussion of law enforcement, and I benefit from the position of being police commissioner. I don’t have to deal in politics; that’s a good thing for me. I just have to focus on the mission, get the job done. Many of those protesters out there were people who I work with on a daily basis; we have different perspectives about certain things obviously, but these are people who we work with, and the message to them was, look this is the Attorney General of the United States. He’s coming to our community to ask how the federal government can assist in eradicating MS-13 from our community, and we had a very productive session today with all of our law enforcement partners, and I really do believe that something good is going to come out of that meeting.
CARLSON: Does the governor government of El Salvador play any role in this? I think about half of the arrested MS-13 members come from that country; it started there. Apparently it’s controlled at least in part from El Salvador. What’s the government’s role in that?
SINI: No question and this is an important piece and this is why local law enforcement officials throughout the country need to be working with their federal law enforcement partners. We need to fight this battle on all fronts. That includes dealing with certain issues in foreign countries and obviously a local police department, we don’t have the jurisdiction or resources to do that, so we’re going to be working with assets throughout the world to tackle this issue and to deal with it both outside this country and inside this country. And it’s going to take all hands on deck, it’s going to take a multi-faceted approach, and it’s going to take a lot of resources which is why today’s meeting was was so promising because we talked very specifically about what type of resources and a lot of folks had good suggestions and we had a good discussion.
CARLSON: Well good, because when 92 percent of those arrested are from a foreign country and foreign citizens, it’s a foreign threat I would say.