There has never been a more salient argument for ending illegal immigration and securing our borders than this: MS-13, considered to be one of the most dangerous gangs in America, used loopholes in the DACA program to smuggle over 2,000 gang members (foot soldiers) into the country.
MS-13 is short for Mara Salvatrucha, but the criminal organization is better known by its abbreviation. The FBI, which has been trying to stop the organization for more than a decade, states that MS-13 is known to operate in at least 42 states and Washington, D.C. and boasts more than 6,000 members.
“The MS-13 motto is kill, rape and control,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during an April visit to Suffolk County, according to the New York Times.
Information published by the National Gang Crime Research Center says that MS-13 was started by Salvadoran illegal immigrants who fled to the U.S. in an attempt to escape a raging civil war in that country that had killed more than 70,000 people.
When the illegal immigrants arrived in California, they began to band together as a way to protect themselves from the Mexican Mafia, the dominant gang in California at the time. By 1993, MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia had become allies and further developed their criminal activities.
The arrest and deportation of MS-13 gang members spread the gang’s presence throughout Central America, but here is a key point: MS-13 was pushed out of the U.S. and back into Central America due to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act which called for the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes. Also, please note that the operative words are “illegal immigrant.” The point is they were here illegally, never attaining the right to be here in the first place.
Since then, the situation has grown exponentially worse, in large part due to the DACA program executed by former President Barrack Obama.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is an American immigration policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country before their 16th birthday and before June 2007 to receive a renewable two-year work permit and exemption from deportation. DACA does confer non-immigrant legal status but does not provide a path to citizenship.
Just how bad has the situation become?
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Gang Threat Assessment, Texas law enforcement officials have classified the MS-13 as a Tier 1-level threat due to their relationships with Mexican cartels, their high levels of transnational criminal activity, their levels of violence, and overall statewide presence, all of which cause a situation where the gang poses the greatest gang threat to Texas.
Tier 1 gangs present a unique threat due to their close relationship with Mexican drug cartels and their willingness to carry out violence for-hire on behalf of those cartels. Texas law enforcement officials have seen a direct relationship between the number of MS-13 encountered by law enforcement and the Central America illegal immigration spikes seen in recent years.
Special Agent Robert G. Saale, FBI agent in charge of a squad of agents who investigate gangs and violent crime in Northern Virginia, stated emphatically that MS-13 is the strongest and the biggest of all the organized gangs. They want to exert their influence in the area and get respect from rival gang members.
In Washington D.C., the gang has been linked to shootings, baseball bat beatings, the stabbing of a pregnant teenager who was a federal witness, and the removal of four fingers from a 16-year-old boy’s hands using a machete. The use of a machete in their acts of violence is their trademark.
The MS-13 gang was also linked to a series of brutal murders on Long Island.
Apparently MS-13 exploited “loopholes” in the Obama-era DACA policy to infiltrate thousands of foot soldiers into the United States, according to an analysis of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of illegals.
During his State of the Union address in 2017, President Donald Trump repeatedly mentioned the MS-13 street gang, stating, “Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13, and other criminals, to break into our country.”
What “loophole” was President Trump referring to?
Angel M. Melendez, a Special Agent in Charge of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations in New York, during a House committee hearing in 2017 stated it best: “Illicit pathways go hand-in-hand with MS-13 increasing its membership,” Melendez said. “Once these children are smuggled into the United States, they become prime targets for enlistment into the gang.”
In testimony to the same committee, Scott Michael Conley, a detective in the Chelsea Police Department in Massachusetts, said that while the majority of unaccompanied minors were fleeing violence, “the smallest group of unaccompanied minors are ‘homeboys’ being sent by the gang to bolster the ranks of MS cliques operating in the United States.”
Conley presented a recruitment scenario when gang members and minors who are not in gangs travel in the same group to the United States. Gang members gather information from non-gang members, such as where they lived and who their relatives are, and later use that information to recruit them. Those who refuse to join are subject to assaults or threats that their relatives will be killed, Conley said.
Then there are the statistics that support the claim: ICE officials recently revealed 99 of the 475 illegals arrested in the agency’s “Operation Matador” enforcement action on Long Island in 2017 were “confirmed as MS-13 gang members” who gained entrance to the United States via the unaccompanied minors program.
According to June 2017 written testimony from U.S. Border Patrol Acting Chief Carla Provost, since fiscal year 2012 the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 159 unaccompanied alien children with confirmed or suspected gang affiliations. Of the 159 children, 56 were suspected or confirmed to be affiliated with MS-13, according to Provost.
But that is just the tip of the iceberg. According to ICE, 45,400 unaccompanied minors, on average, were apprehended per fiscal year from 2012 to 2017. Read that again. That’s over 45,000 unaccompanied minors each and every year from 2012 to 2017.
Now the good news is that President Trump has ended the DACA program, which is stemming the flow at the border. But it does not address the issue of the illegal immigrant “gang members” who made it across the border and now reside in the United States and wreak havoc across our country.
Case in point: As of January 22, 2018, more than 500 individuals who obtained DACA benefits that were later revoked due to criminal and/or gang involvement were apparently still living in the country and at large, according to statistics provided by USCIS to Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The problem is twofold. They got into the country illegally through DACA–which Trump thankfully ended. But the second issue is that under current law, gang members are not automatically barred from receiving immigration benefits such as green cards, work permits, and Temporary Protected Status, and clearly many have obtained these benefits in recent years.
Who in their right mind wants to still grant Amnesty to these illegal immigrants?
Of course, we could have built the wall years ago and kept them out to begin with. But instead, we now have to clean up the mess. It’s incredible that these violent criminals are still entitled to government benefits. In what world does that even make sense?
You want to fix the immigration problem? It’s pretty easy actually. President Trump simply needs to sign an executive order barring any government benefits to illegals. It’s simple. Government benefits are for American citizens only. There, problem solved. If there is no free “lunch” then there is no incentive to come.
Bottom Line: There should be no deal on DACA unless we find a solution and close the loophole that flows gang wannabes into this nation while also allowing convicted and known gang members to stay. This should be a non-negotiable element of any bill that gives amnesty to DACA recipients.
