The Patriot Post® · Cracking Down on MS-13 Gang-Bangers

From 2005-2014 ICE officials arrested 4,000 members of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, international street gang. A whopping 92% of them were illegals, and while they comprised 13% of ICE gang arrests during that period, they accounted for 35% of the murderers. That put quite a dent in their vicious, criminal operation — until Barack Obama reinvigorated it by dispersing 120,000 Central American “refugees” throughout the nation over the last two years. In short, the so-called border “surge” has bought a surge in murder and other violence courtesy of MS-13, which now operates in at least 46 states and Washington, DC.

“We are inexperienced in seeing the level of brutality, savagery that MS-13 is doing here in Texas,” explained Jackson County Sheriff Andy Louderback during a teleconference panel hosted by Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) president Jessica Vaughn. Louderback further noted that Texas is enduring “multiple deportees using machetes, scalping, killing 14-year-olds,” as well as MS-13 members who posed as music producers to lure a 15-year-old girl to a meeting where they “took her captive, sexually assaulted her for two days before she was able to get free, get a cellphone, get a hold of 9-1-1.”

And it’s not just in Texas. In an article titled “‘They Keep Finding Bodies’: Gang Violence in Long Island Town Fuels Immigration Debate,” The New York Times revealed that in Brentwood, Long Island, four dead teenagers were discovered in the space of two weeks. The battered bodies of Nisa Mickens, 15, and her best friend, Kayla Cuevas, 16, were found near an elementary school, followed a week later by the discovery of the skeletal remains of Oscar Acosta, 19, and Miguel Garcia-Moran, 15, discovered in the woods near a psychiatric hospital. Authorities believe all of the savagery was the handiwork of MS-13.

What the Times managed to avoid reporting? “According to data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), since 2014, 3,709 UACs have been placed in Suffolk County, where Brentwood is located,” CIS reveals. “This figure makes the Long Island county the third highest placement site of UACs by ORR.” Carlos Sanchez, director for school safety for the Brentwood School District estimates that “more than half of this 3,709 has settled in Brentwood,” CIS adds.

UACs is short for the tsunami of Unaccompanied Alien Children the Obama administration has inflicted on communities like Brentwood. And as CIS also reveals, the change in demographics there is stunning. The town of 60,000 had been a been a predominately Puerto Rican working class community for decades. As a result of the influx of Central American immigrants — at a rate six times the national average — Brentwood is now 51% Central American and 18% Puerto Rican.

And make no mistake: the Obama administration is a willful accomplice. “Reports show thousands of unaccompanied illegal alien minors, some of them identified as obvious gang members by U.S. Border Patrol agents, have been transferred to several of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York City, Houston and the Washington, D.C. area — cities that all rank among the top strongholds of the Latin American gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13” reported CNS News — two years ago.

Nonetheless the Office of Refugee Resettlement insists each child receives a comprehensive vetting, and that they employ enhanced safety protocols that include “robust” screening and “extensive” background checks before releasing a child to a sponsor. Yet as CIS reveals such “diligence” is apparently limited to those who pose an obvious threat to the child’s safety. “Typically there is no assessment of financial stability, and even a criminal background does not necessarily disqualify a sponsor,” CIS explains.

It’s worse than that. At a 2014 Senate hearing, Health and Human Services Acting Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families Mark Greenberg admitted that HHS does “not verify the immigration status of the individual” to whom they are releasing the children.

Maybe HHS doesn’t, but CIS does. They reveal that more than 80% of Central American UACs arriving illegally have been placed with sponsors who are also living in America illegally, and that an additional 700 UACs were placed with sponsors undergoing deportation proceedings. Thus, it should surprise no one that an ORR telephone follow up program “yielded contact with only 56 percent of children placed with sponsors.”

ORR spokesman Mark Weber reveals more bankrupt policy that informs his agency. “Given ORR does not release children considered to be a threat to the community, providing a list of placements to local police would not only be an intrusion on the privacy of the child and sponsor, it would be an inefficient use of limited resources” he insists. “ORR consistently cooperates with local police and child welfare officials if there is an investigation into the wellbeing of a child.”

In the meantime, the well-being of the community is threatened by gang members actively recruiting children using a variety of methods that include promises of protection and support — or fear and intimidation tactics that include gang members telling children their networks in El Salvador will murder the child’s family members if they refuse to join.

On Nov. 1 in Charlotte, NC, two MS-13 gang members were sentenced to life in prison for murder, racketeering and other charges. A third MS-13 gang member, Jorge Garcia, 27, received a 70 month federal prison sentence following a guilty plea to RICO conspiracy and attempted murder in aid of racketeering charges. Court documents reveal that between 2009 through May 2015 the three were joined another 34 individuals named in a federal indictment who were members of MS-13. Twenty-nine of them have receive substantial prison sentences.

In October in Newark, New Jersey, six MS-13 members received federal prison sentences ranging from six to nine years for what prosecutors describe as an effort to consolidate the gang’s nationwide activities.

Vaughn reveals the Obama administration “misused” the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), intended to protect against the trafficking of unaccompanied minors to allow “tens of thousands of illegal alien teenagers who are neither unaccompanied nor trafficked” into America. Thus, “an average of 260 unaccompanied youths are being allowed in every day, compared to about 150 a day in 2014,” she adds.

“In the past, it used to be like rival gangs on each other,” said Brentwood school superintendent Levi McIntyre. “But now it has taken another turn. When it goes after all kids, it’s a whole new realm. It’s tearing the fabric of our community apart.”

It’s tearing the fabric of the nation apart. And of the many things the electorate made stunningly clear Tuesday night, one of the more important ones is the idea they are no longer interested trashing the Rule of Law to allow illegal aliens — especially criminal gang-bangers — access to America. We have enough criminals. We don’t need to import them.