After hearing parents tell of the deaths of their children at the hands of MS-13, Rep. Pete King said he stood with President Donald Trump against the gang at a roundtable on immigration policy on Wednesday in Bethpage, New York.
Trump led the high-powered roundtable at the Morrelly Homeland Security Center that included King, Rep. Dan Donovan, Rep. Lee Zeldin, Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Nassau Police Commissioner Pat Ryder, and Suffolk County Police Commissioner Gerri Hart.
"These are not people — these are animals, and we have to be very, very tough," Trump said during the roundtable discussion, a description that recently brought him criticism from critics, Newsday reported.
The most moving testimony was given by the parents of the two murdered Long Island teenagers — 15-year-old Nisa Mickens and 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas — allegedly had the hands of MS-13 members, Newsday said.
The deaths happened in Brentwood in September 2016 when the girls were brutally assaulted with baseball bats and a machete.
"We have to go through this every day," Robert Mickens, Nisa's father, told the panel. "This is an ongoing struggle. It’s not easy for us to wake up, look down the hallway, and not see my daughter lying in her bed and me waking her up for school."
Robert Mickens said his daughter would have graduated from high school this year.
"It's one thing for children to have a little argument, a little fistfight, walk away the next day, but to murder another student, a fellow classmate that you see every day, you are not in my opinion, you are not an ordinary human," Mickens continued.
King called their words "moving."
"Most moving were the heartbreaking accounts from victims' parents describing their children's deaths," King said. "I thanked President Trump for being the first president to focus the full power of the federal government toward destroying MS-13. The president pledged to do everything possible to end the MS-13 killing fields.”
"… Destroying MS-13 is not a partisan issue; it is an American issue. The protestors can yell all they want – we stand with President Trump against MS-13."