Trump Touts Crackdown on Illegal-Alien Gang Violence

President Donald Trump touted his administration’s war against illegal-immigrant crime on Tuesday morning with a tweet singling out his predecessor for allowing the rise of MS-13, the infamous Central American street gang.

“The weak illegal immigration policies of the Obama Admin. [sic] allowed bad MS 13 gangs to form in cities across U.S. We are removing them fast!” the president claimed.

“Gang leaders in the home countries instructed local clique leaders in different parts of the United States to boost their ranks with these newly arrived kids.”

Trump also referenced forward progress under his leadership in tackling illegal-immigrant crime during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning. “We’ve gotten tremendous criminals out of this country,” said Trump.

“I’m talking about illegal immigrants that were here that caused tremendous crime that have murdered people, raped people; horrible things have happened,” he said, “They are getting the hell out, or they are going to prison.”

The scale of gang-related violence carried out across the U.S. at the hands of MS-13 drew comparisons with terrorism in recent weeks.

ISIS “is nothing compared to MS-13,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Thursday. “That organization, a mostly immigrant street gang, is a far greater threat to your life than ISIS is. It’s the numbers,” Carlson said. The segment followed the discovery last week of the bodies of four men in Long Island, New York, murdered brutally by MS-13.

“They all suffered from significant trauma throughout their body. It appears they were killed with a sharp or edged instrument,” Suffolk [County, New York] Police Commissioner Timothy Sini said during a press conference at the time. “We will confirm the manner in which they were killed is consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13.”

“There’s no question MS-13 still exists in Suffolk County,” Sini said. “This is a long-term war and make no mistake about it – it’s a war.”

Roughly three weeks ago, the body of 17-year-old Raymond Wood was found in Bedford County, Virginia. Three MS-13 gang members — all illegal aliens — were charged with the murder in early April.

In early March, over a dozen MS-13 members were charged with the murders of teen girls Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, also of Suffolk County, New York, whose bodies were found in September last year, only a stone’s throw from where the four MS-13 victims were discovered last week.

In the first week of March, ICE issued six detainers for illegal alien MS-13 members involved in the January murder of 15-year-old Damaris Reyes Rivas in Virginia, whose body was discovered in Fairfax County.

ICE also issued detainers for two other illegal-alien MS-13 members who murdered teenager Christian Sosa Rivas in Prince William County, Virginia, also in January. The detainers for both sets of murderers were issued only a week after two more bodies of suspected MS-13 victims were discovered in the Washington, D.C. area.

“This problem is horrible,” Fairfax County Police Chief Ed Roessler said at the time. “This is four murders in this park. Obviously, we’ve had other murders in the region in the past few weeks. This is getting out of control, and we need to stop it.”

But, as Carlson noted last week, “killing is not the end of the problem with MS-13. Its members have been caught running child prostitution rings. They’ve been contacted by Mexican drug cartels and paid to run torture operations. And, of course, they engage in the usual extortion, drug trafficking, and human smuggling,” Carlson explained.

Advocates for the enforcement of immigration law say violent gangs took advantage of eight years of lax border security and interior immigration enforcement under the previous administration.

“MS-13 is known to have taken advantage of the Obama administration’s catch and release policy for unaccompanied youths arriving illegally from Central America,” Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies.

[lz_related_box id=”529661″]

“Gang leaders in the home countries instructed local clique leaders in different parts of the United States to boost their ranks with these newly arrived kids,” Vaughan said.

“Obviously not all of the tens of thousands of kids who came here are gang members, but the problem with the administration’s policy was they did not ask any questions and didn’t provide any follow-up monitoring, which led to the MS-13 being re-invigorated and causing more mayhem than ever.”