The Obama Administration really cared about permitting illegal immigrants who were criminals into the U.S.
Right.
According to Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in 2014 the Obama administration, knowing the illegal immigrants they were allowing to enter the U.S. were admitted MS-13 gang members, still let them in and transported them to juvenile homes throughout the country.
Johnson cited Customs and Border Protection documents from 2014 released by a whistleblower. He said, “CBP apprehended them, knew they were MS-13 gang members, and they processed and disbursed them into our communities.”
In 2014, there was a surge of UAC, or “unaccompanied alien children,” entering the U.S. from Central America. Johnson pointed out out of nearly 200,000 UAC apprehended between from 2012 to 2016, 68% were ages 15, 16 or 17, and the majority were male, ripe for recruitment by gangs.
Shockingly, Sen. Claire McCaskill, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, slammed the release of the whistleblower documents, asserting, “I have concerns that these documents were released so quickly.”
Reports have surfaced that the UAC surge provided a number of recruits for violent gangs; Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said, “The gangs surf the internet, building dossiers on potential recruits.” He added that local gangs may murder over drug disputes, but MS-13 members murder because of perceived gang ties or to enforce discipline.
As The Washington Times reports, “MS-13 is notoriously violent, with beheadings or amputations by machete a not-infrequent punishment inflicted on those that defy the gang.” The Los Angeles Times stated, “MS-13 was started in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by Salvadoran immigrants — many of them young ex-soldiers — fleeing their country’s civil war … The ruthless Salvadoran street gang MS-13 has terrorized the streets of Los Angeles and other cities for decades.” CNN explained, “MS-13 became so powerful that the FBI started a MS-13 National Gang Task Force in 2004.”
According to the FBI:
Based on information from our own investigations, from our state and local law enforcement partners, and from community organizations, we’ve concluded that while the threat posed by MS-13 to the U.S. as a whole is at the “medium” level, membership in parts of the country is so concentrated that we’ve labeled the threat level there “high.”
MS-13 operates in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia and has about 6,000-10,000 members nationwide. Currently, the threat is highest in the western and northeastern parts of the country, which coincides with elevated Salvadoran immigrant populations in those areas. In the southeast and central regions, the current threat is moderate to low, but recently, we’ve seen an influx of MS-13 members into the southeast, causing an increase in violent crimes there.
MS-13 members engage in a wide range of criminal activity, including drug distribution, murder, rape, prostitution, robbery, home invasions, immigration offenses, kidnapping, carjackings/auto thefts, and vandalism. Most of these crimes, you’ll notice, have one thing in common—they are exceedingly violent. And while most of the violence is directed toward other MS-13 members or rival street gangs, innocent citizens often get caught in the crossfire.