Attorney General Jeff Sessions went to the Long Island turf of the MS-13 street gang on Friday to deliver more tough talk following a string of violent acts, including the hacking of four people found dead in Central Islip earlier this month.
"We will find you," Sessions had already warned the gang members last week, cementing them firmly in the whole immigration enforcement challenge. On Friday, he vowed to eradicate them, said The New York Times.
“The MS-13 motto is kill, rape and control,” said Sessions, per the Times. “Our motto is justice for victims and consequences for criminals. That’s how simple it is. Prosecute them, and after they’ve been convicted, if they’re not here lawfully, they’re going to be deported.”
The gang, with roots in El Salvador, has been connected to a possible 15 homicides in Suffolk County over the past 16 months, eight of those high school students, according to NBC News.
The Trump administration has blamed former President Barack Obama's immigration policies for allowing the MS-13 to grow in the country.
"Just a few days ago, law enforcement believes that members of MS-13 murdered four young men and dumped their bodies in a park in Long Island," Sessions told a meeting on transnational organized crime in Washington, D.C., reported Newsday.
"We will secure our border, expand immigration enforcement and choke off supply lines. If you are a gang member, we will find you. . . . We will not concede a single block or street corner to your vicious tactics."
The MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha 13, was started in Los Angeles in the 1980s by Salvadorans fleeing civil war in that country, said Hector Silva Avalos, a research fellow at American University and an El Salvador native, who was interviewed by National Public Radio. The gang has now spread to D.C., Long Island, and the Boston metropolitan areas, Avalos added.
But Avalos told NPR the spread of MS-13 has been happening for at least several decades.
"I don't think the Obama administration policies (have) anything to do with this," said Avalos, who worked as an investigative journalist in El Salvador before coming to American University. "The birth of MS-13 and the spreading of MS-13 was way before the Obama administration. Actually, it was in 2004 when the FBI took notice and stated that it had spread already to some 40 states of the United States."
Robert Mickens, the father of girls in the Long Island area, told the New York Post he welcomed Sessions visit to the area and wants to him to bring President Donald Trump with him.
"He definitely needs to come out here to see what's going on," Mickens told the Post.
He said the gang has been "running rampant" while local politicians have turned a blind eye to the problems in the area.
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