gangs

Nearly 100 recently arrested MS-13 gang members arrived in the United States by crossing through the U.S.-Mexico border as “unaccompanied minors” and then getting resettled throughout the country by the federal government.

About 475 gang members have been arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s “Operation Matador” sting, with 99 of those gang members arrested having arrived in the U.S. as “unaccompanied minors.”

Of the 99 MS-13 gang members who entered the country as unaccompanied minors, 64 of them were granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJ), which acts as a quasi-amnesty program for young illegal aliens who cross the southern border.

Of the 475 gang members arrested by ICE in this operation, 65 of them had been allowed to be released into the U.S. by an immigration judge, while four were re-arrested on criminal charges after they were released.

Unaccompanied minors who cross the southern border have continued to be resettled across the U.S. despite a direct correlation of the quasi-amnesty program — known as the Unaccompanied Minor Childrens (UAC) program — with the proliferation of the MS-13 gang in regions of the country like Nassau County and Suffolk County in New York.

Under President Trump’s administration, the UAC program has continued. For example, in Fiscal Year 2018 thus far, nearly 200 unaccompanied minors have been resettled in Suffolk County, along with almost 280 in Queens County, and more than 115 in Nassau County, despite the regions’ issues with the MS-13 gang.

The Obama administration knowingly let in at least 16 admitted MS-13 gang members who arrived at the U.S. as illegal immigrant teenagers in 2014, a top senator said Wednesday, citing internal documents that showed the teens were shipped to juvenile homes throughout the country.

Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said a whistleblower turned over Customs and Border Protection documents from 2014 detailing the 16 persons who were caught crossing the border.

“CBP apprehended them, knew they were MS-13 gang members, and they processed and disbursed them into our communities,” Mr. Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said.

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.