(Photo by Michael Ukas – Pool /Getty Images)
According to new reports, the Obama administration ‘knowingly allowed’ members of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang into the United States.
In an article published by The Washington Times, Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, claims whistleblower turned over Customs and Border Protection documents from 2014 detailing the 16 people who were caught crossing the border.
The whistleblower says that the Obama administration knowingly let in at least 16 MS-13 gang member teenagers in 2014, citing internal documents that showed the teens were shipped to juvenile homes throughout the country.
The gang members were part of the surge of UAC, or “unaccompanied alien children,” as the government labels them, who overwhelmed the Obama administration in 2014, leaving Homeland Security struggling to staunch the flow from Central America.
Officials at the time said the children should be treated as refugees fleeing horrific conditions back home — though security analysts said the children were prime recruiting territory for gangs already in the U.S.
Mr. Johnson said the image of UAC as little children is misleading. Out of nearly 200,000 UAC apprehended between from 2012 to 2016, 68 percent were ages 15, 16 or 17 — meaning older teens. The majority were also male, making them targets for gang recruiting.
Federal prosecutors believe that MS-13, or the Mara Salvatrucha, have thousands of members across the United States, most of which are immigrants from Central America.
They are a notoriously violent hang, with beheadings or amputations by machete being a common tactic of theirs.
This news comes after a rise in awareness of MS-13’s presence, specifically in the Northeast. According to the New York Post, the MS-13 gang is linked to a 38% of all the homicides in Suffolk County, Long Island over the last 16 months.
via New York Post:
Since Jan. 1, 2016, 17 of 45 murders in the county have been connected to the brutal gang, testified Police Commissioner Timothy Sini.
He said MS-13 engages in selling drugs, stealing and extortion, but unlike other gangs, the primary motivation isn’t to make money but to terrorize the community.
“MS-13 often engages in violence for the sake of violence,” Sini told the Senate Homeland Security Committee, “to increase notoriety of the gang and to cause communities to fear the gang and its members.”
The reason for this is that of the 165,000 unaccompanied minors the United States has placed since 2013, Suffolk County has gotten about 4,500 of them, with about 500 of those people being a part of MS-13.
