Criminal Alien Gangs

FAIR's Preston Huennekens, Matthew Tragesser, and Spencer Raley discuss the issue of criminal alien gangs in the U.S. and how enforcing laws at the border and in the interior can make communities safer.

Show Notes

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Intro: Today on Understanding Immigration, criminal alien gangs.
They're forgetting who these people are targeting and that's other immigrants in these immigrant communities. I think it's very important for us to point out that if this program has ended you will see more violent gang members enter the United States. The U.S. cannot be solely responsible in taking action against these gangs, we need the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, to step up.
Coming to you from Washington, D.C., you are now listening to FAIR’s Understanding Immigration Podcast.

Preston:
Welcome back to another episode of FAIR’s Understanding Immigration podcast. This is Preston Huennekens with FAIR's lobbying team and I’m joined as always by Matthew Tragesser from our media shop and Spencer Raley our research director. Today we're going to be discussing the continued growth of criminal alien gangs in the United States, where do they come from, what is their history in our country, and what is law enforcement doing to stop them? But before we get into that, we're going to dive into some recent immigration news with the electoral college certifying Joe Biden's election victory on December 14th, we now know that immigration policy is likely going to change quite drastically. Many including those of us at FAIR, expect Biden and his team to take a significant step away from enforcing immigration laws that are already on the books and already because of that prediction there are new caravans forming south of Mexico. Under the Trump administration we were able to prevent these caravans from reaching the United States because of our asylum agreements with the Northern Triangle countries as well as the Migrant Protection Protocols that we had with Mexico. So, I want to ask each of you this question, if Biden does end these asylum agreements, what is stopping massive caravans from reaching and entering the United States?

Spencer:
Well Preston, in short, nothing. Especially if the Biden administration gets their entire wish list and ditches the Migrant Protection Protocol if they stop enforcing immigration law especially in the first hundred day like the days like they've been talking about freezing deportations, stopping building the wall, withdrawing from the agreements we have in Mexico and Central America, there's literally nothing that would stop these caravans from coming to the United States and successfully entering. Of course one of the biggest deterrents right now is the fact that we have the Migrant Protection, the MPP program that requires asylum applicants to stay in Mexico while their claims are being processed and that has deterred a lot of these caravans because the people that are coming, for the most part are economic migrants and that does not qualify for asylum so they know now that they're not going to be able to enter into the United States and so they're opting to turn around and go home since there's very little chance that their claims will be approved. Getting rid of that, these potential illegal aliens will be able to come into the United States illegally put forward a frivolous asylum claim and then be released into the United States where a massive number of them are just never going to show up for their hearings, especially with the two-pronged promise of a deportation pause and a mass amnesty coming. So, yeah again in short there's very little to stop them from coming to the United States. In fact, the Biden administration is basically putting up a big “Welcome to America” banner, anyone who can get across the border is welcome to stay here.

Matthew:
Right, Preston I mean it can't be understated how vital these asylum agreements and the MPPs were, kind of to echo what Spencer said there, I mean the MPPs had almost an immediate effect at the southern border in 2019 when they were first rolled out in January. In just over a year, 60,000 migrants mostly from the Northern Triangle countries were returned from the U.S. to Mexico until their court hearing date in the U.S., so it acted as a huge deterrent and again as Spencer said, a lot of these migrants that are trying to apply for asylum in our country, were coming for economic reasons, or coming from better job opportunities, but that doesn't qualify for asylum in our country. And so again, this is going to be a massive mistake for the Biden-Harris administration to unravel, the MPPs, the asylum cooperation agreements with the Central American countries, and this caravan, there's one in particular that just left Honduras this this past week, but it's likely to be the first of many. I mean it's, as Spencer said as well, a lot of the policies proposed by the Biden-Harris administration are going to encourage illegal immigration, whether it's the deportation halts, the stoppage of the construction of the southern border wall, or an executive mass amnesty. I mean all these things are directly benefiting illegal aliens and expect this caravan to be not the last one, it's gonna be the first of many, and you're already seeing right now, surges in border migration. For instance, in April there were 17,000 illegal alien apprehensions out our southern border and November, last month it's up to 70,000 a more than 300 percent increase. And these migrants are well aware that the Biden-Harris proposals are going to benefit them and we're going to see these numbers continue to grow. It's no surprise that they're growing and it's going to be a tough battle for border officials at the southern border, especially during the covid-19 pandemic when resources are strained

Preston:
Yeah and it's going to be really interesting I think from a political perspective, how the Biden-Harris team is going to address this because it was a very close election and if you're seeing border states that actually swung to Biden-Harris like Arizona, getting overwhelmed with caravans it's going to be all over the news and if voters don't think that they're taking it seriously or that they're just throwing open the gates and letting everyone come through, that that could seriously backfire on them. Particularly if it happens before the 2022 midterm elections which, already the map is looking better for republicans than it is for democrats so it will be interesting to see if Biden and Harris do decide to take away these agreements and really just let these caravans in and what the political fallout from that would be going into 2022. But, so I want then, I think this actually leads us into our main topic today which is the discussion on criminal alien gangs. Unfettered illegal immigration brings all kinds of people to the country and while many of them probably the majority of them simply just want to come here, earn money, live quietly in the shadows, there's unfortunately many examples of criminal aliens who come to the U.S. and then continue their criminal behavior. And the United States is no stranger to gangs as we all know cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore they've all struggled with gang violence and continue to struggle with gang violence. But now law enforcement is facing emerging threats from foreign gangs and immigrant gangs that continue growing in our cities and the two best examples of these are probably MS-13 and Barrio 18. So, Matthew, you've tracked the reach of these gangs and seen their impact in the media. Where are these gangs located and how do they continue to grow in the United States?

Matthew:
Right so I, want to touch on in this segment on at least three of these gangs that have been an absolute nightmare for law enforcement, our American citizens, and just immigration authorities throughout the country. The first is MS-13 and they've probably been the most prominent and highlighted gang in recent years and have become a major priority for the Trump administration in the past four years and this gang was formed by Salvadorans who settled in Los Angeles in the 1980s and many of these Salvadorans at the time were fleeing a long and brutal civil war in El Salvador. Then in in the ensuing years other members began to come from Honduras, Guatemala, and even Mexico and the gang rapidly began to expand and many people wonder, okay what does the ms-13 gang name really mean? And the MS stands for “mara salvatrucha” which is said to be a combination of “mara” meaning gang, “saba” for Salvador and “trucha” which translates roughly into street smarts and then the number 13 represents the position of M in the English alphabet. Their motto is pretty horrific in Spanish it is “kill, rape, and control”, they're notorious for using extreme violence and the usage of machetes and much of their crimes and in 2012 the U.S. treasury designated the gang to be a transnational criminal organization which was actually the first street gang to receive this designation. So, they have been prevalent for several years now and the FBI currently puts the size of the gang between 6,000 and 10,000 members in the U.S. making it one of the largest criminal enterprises in the entire country. And so right now the gang expands pretty much to every state in the United States but most of the criminal activity, if you look at the data, they take place in three main states, which are California, Maryland and New York. And this is not surprising, given that all these states have sanctuary jurisdictions that shield illegal aliens from deportation, that shield local law enforcement from providing information to people like ICE on illegal immigrants in their jurisdictions. So again, these gangs have flourished in these types of open border states that support these policies. And now, as I said, the Trump administration has made tackling and combating MS-13 a large priority. In 2019 they arrested more than 400 MS-13 gang members, so there is at least, they are trying to address this problem. Now, I want to highlight one specific case just to show how horrific MS-13 is, or how they have been in recent years and this occurred in 2017 right, actually right by D.C., in Maryland where a sev-, or an 18-year-old actually, was lured in by MS-13 gang members into Wheaton Regional Park, which is in Maryland. They choked him out until he passed out, they took turns slashing him with machetes and knives until he died, and then they severed his head, ripped his heart out. and tossed his dismembered body parts into a grave, all according to the Baltimore Sun. So, this is one of the most horrific incidents that law enforcement saw in that area for almost in its entire history. It goes to show the type of threat that MS-13 currently presents to our country. Now similar to MS-13, there is also the 18th Street Gang, and this is arguably the number one rival of the MS-13 gang because they both actively recruit in Central America, they both want to be seen as the most violent and the most publicized criminal gang. So, there is a bit of rivalry between both of those gangs but the 18th Street Gang, they were formed in Los Angeles in California during the 1960s, they were mainly a Mexican street gang, actually formed on a street called 18th Street in Los Angeles which is how they got their name, and like I said, they also have expanded outside of just Mexican nationals in terms of recruitment. They've expanded to central American members and the FBI cites that there are between 30,000 and 50,000 members in 20 states which is obviously a huge number. And as you mentioned too, the Barrio 18 gang also presents numerous public safety risks to our country right now, as does the Latin Kings gang in our country and so again, a lot of these gangs are not gonna be going anywhere anytime soon. They're largely fueled by a poor southern border, sanctuary policies that don't deport these individuals when they need to be deported, and under a Biden-Harris administration, I would expect these gangs are going to proliferate, expand, and be able to recruit more members. So, turning it to you, Spencer, obviously they present… these gangs present a lot of problems for our country, a lot of risks, has the Trump administration, aside from arresting these individuals, have they done other initiatives to tackle these gang problems, has Congress done anything, you know what can we do to curb these gangs and the recruitment of these gangs, as well?

Spencer:
Well yeah, absolutely and really there's kind of the Trump administration and President Trump almost as soon as he took office, began kind of a two-pronged approach to combating gangs in the United States, whether it be the gang violence or just keeping gang members from entering the United States. And the first thing he did was issue an executive order directing the federal government to develop a plan to combat the ongoing pandemic of gangs as I like to call it, especially targeting MS-13. And this originally led, then Attorney General, Jeff Sessions to create the Transnational Organized Crime Task Force. And now outgoing Attorney General Barr created a similar task force to kind of carry on that work known as Task Force Vulcan, with kind of a similar goal and these efforts have been very effective to a certain degree. I mean at this point the two task forces have prosecuted around 750 MS-13 gang members alone, along with members of these other violent criminal gangs that we've discussed, and also just other lone actors, and criminals from smaller gangs as well. And they did this largely through creating agreements with cities that were willing to do that as well as using government resources, redirecting those to learn more about the gangs, learning where they operate, and trying to catch them in some of their actions and figure out what their movements are, and just be able to really take the fights to the streets, as you would say. They've also learned some very interesting things about these gangs as well in that process, for example, about 75 percent of the gang members that they've prosecuted so far are illegal aliens. These are people who entered the United States almost exclusively across the southern border, most of them are not able to, obviously, get a visa to come here legally, some of them were recruited as lawful migrants while they're in the United States, but that's a relatively small number, and a comparatively small number have actually been U.S. citizens and typically those U.S. citizens are second/third generation Americans whose families came from a nation like El Salvador and, one thing MS-13 is really known for is pursuing young people who may have come to the United States as a UAC (unaccompanied alien child) that they were recruiting to be gang members and they'll send gang members to the United States to track these potential recruits down, either force them to join the gang or else commit one of these violent brutal murders like Matthew was talking about just a little bit ago. So, this is largely an issue with illegal immigration, so part of the approach the Trump administration has taken, has been to try to secure the border along popular areas that gangs used to travel and he's done that to quite a bit of success. You're seeing them try to mix up their strategy to enter the United States, whether it's through trying to find a loophole, such as bringing young children to the United States and claiming to be family members or even going out to more, what they would call a high-risk crossing area out in the middle of the desert where there's little protection, and trying to cross that way. And that's good from a strategic standpoint, because when you have gang members, drug smugglers, human traffickers, that class of people trying to cross out in an open desert, it makes it a lot easier to track their movement, and therefore to apprehend them. So, you're seeing a concerted effort on those fronts to try to take the fight to these gangs. And another thing you've been seeing the Trump administration doing along with that is working with foreign governments to extradite and prosecute illegal alien gang members. That goes both ways. You've seen examples of violent murderers being able to escape the United States and going back to El Salvador, Guatemala, even Mexico and those governments extraditing those criminals back to the United States for prosecution and you've seen the other way around too, especially if you were to catch a gang member who maybe hasn't yet committed one of these horrific acts in the United States, but they have in their country of origin. You've been seeing the United States work with those countries to send them back to the country to face prosecution as well. So, in some ways it's a deterrence game, if young people see that there's not a lot of value to joining these gangs, they're definitely going to be tracked out and prosecuted. It helps deter them from ever joining in the first place, and beyond that, it's a public safety issue, it's part of the process of getting these criminals off the streets. The one other thing I wanted to touch on really quick, the second prong that I see at the Trump administration has been using to combat gangs has been to try, to the best of their ability, to close immigration loopholes and the most successful ones so far that we've already touched on just a little bit, has been the Migrant Protection Protocol, which in part requires asylum applicants to remain in Mexico or another safe country while their case is being processed, and what this has done, is it's deterred gang members from posing as asylum applicants and then disappearing into the country and never showing up for their hearings. This has been this has been very effective and President-Elect Joe Biden has promised in this program and I think it's very important for us to point out that if this program has ended, you will see more violent gang members enter the United States using this loophole. The other thing that has only been successful, to a very small degree, has been trying to close some of the loopholes that would allow MS-13 to infiltrate the United States by posing as the parents of unaccompanied alien minors. This has been a little bit more difficult, it's obviously been through court battles, it's been in the front of the media, and so it's another area where you can fully expect the incoming Biden administration to take no action on, but it's an area of concern that the Trump administration has tried to take care of there as well. The other thing I think that's important, especially as we move into a presidential administration that is, just honestly at this point, doesn't look like they're going to place a high priority on combating these gangs in the United States is that local and state officials need to step up their game and cooperate with ICE, border patrol, and other federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI to try to combat gangs, just on a state by state, even a city by city, or county by county level. And really, and you would think this would be obvious that these counties and states would, across the board, want to work with federal law enforcement in order to identify, prosecute, and ultimately deport these gang members, but this isn't happening in a lot of the big cities and states, including the ones where these gangs have been the most active, such as Baltimore, Maryland or New York City, pretty much all of California. You're seeing these states implement sanctuary policies and actively try to release gang members back into society once they fulfill any state or local jail sentence, if that even happens. So, it makes absolutely no sense because these gang members create violence, they actively work to get drugs into the hands of kids, they kidnap young women, they traffic humans, and do all sorts of other just despicable acts, and it makes no sense why any city, state, county, any jurisdiction would want to protect these violent criminals versus placing them in the hands of federal law enforcement and getting them deported out of the country.

Preston:
Spencer can I, I just want to add one point to what you're saying there is: people often forget, especially lawmakers that support sanctuary legislation and try to protect criminal aliens from being deported, they're forgetting who these people are targeting and that's other immigrants in these immigrant communities, and so it's really backwards that they think they're protecting immigrant communities, but they're not. They're just releasing the people that are extorting them, that are robbing them, that are shooting, I mean it makes no sense to say that you're in favor of protecting immigrants and immigrant communities, when at the same time you are releasing criminal aliens back into those same communities to continue terrorizing them.

Spencer:
That's a very good point, Preston, I’m glad you brought that up because that goes back to something we mentioned just briefly a little earlier, that a lot of these, especially with MS-13, a lot of their violent acts are a result of trying to track down gang members that have tried to flee the violence in El Salvador and other countries where they operate. So, when they come to the United States, they're not only targeting U.S. citizens, they're not targeting even to an extent, only lawful migrants, they're going after other illegal aliens, they're going after other poor migrant families, because those are the easiest prey for them. So, I really like that point it's not… these sanctuary policies are supposedly being put together to help protect immigrants who just want to come here for work, but they don't do that. Often that's the class that ends up being the most negatively affected. And just one more point I want to bring up because we often don't think about this, many of these gangs come to the United States in the way they're most successful is they try to embed into society, they try to camouflage themselves and work undercover. And so, one thing that we have seen that has been highly effective in a state-by-state basis and states can do this, is to make E-Verify mandatory and while that may not sound like an effective gang deterrence strategy, what it does is it stops these gang members from trying to embed into society by picking up work and then using that as a base for their undercover actions and other nefarious operations. We see it time and time again, whether it's a drug smuggling ring, a human trafficking ring, or even you know just a front for other gang activity often happens when you have a group of people working for a particular business, or starting their own business, or having some sort of cover so that they can be more effective and stay out of the of the view of law enforcement. So, if we were to put in some of these programs like E-Verify and make it mandatory, it would just make it that much harder for violent gang members to operate in the United States.

Preston:
Yeah, those are all really fantastic points and you know it's interesting because, when you think about this from a legislative angle, there's really not a whole lot that can be done in addition to just enforcing laws on the books and just making sure that we're able to get criminal aliens into the deportation process. There's a bill that was introduced early in this current Congress, H.R.98 which is the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, and all that does is that it gives asylum officers, it gives CBP officers, and immigration judges the ability and the deference to deny entry to people that are suspected of having gang activity right at the border. And that's an important tool but, it's and I’m not disparaging the bill but, it's almost not necessary if you are just enforcing laws that are already on the books, if you're giving local and state law enforcement the tools that they need to get criminal aliens out of their jails, out of their prisons, and into the removal process, then a lot of that becomes really kind of unnecessary. And so, I think from the legislative angle, you just, what you have to do is you have to give these local jurisdictions the tools, first of all, to extradite these people and to get them into the hands of federal law enforcement, but also you have to pass legislation that prevents some of these more activist jurisdictions from becoming sanctuary cities, or from shielding criminal illegal aliens, and things of that nature. And so, I don't know if either of y'all had had other ideas on that, on what maybe can be done further with tools that already exist, to crack down on these gangs.





Matthew:
Well, I think one element we haven't really touched on yet, which I think actually should be very much highlighted, is the fact that the U.S. cannot be solely responsible in taking action against these gangs. We need the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala to step up and, you look at a country like Mexico, large regions of the country are run by criminal Mexican cartels and these gangs kind of operate in a similar sense in the Northern Triangle countries, and this is not only driving the Northern Triangle, or people that live in these Northern Triangle countries to migrate to the U.S., but then they try to seek asylum and, unfortunately gang violence doesn't qualify for U.S. political asylum in our country right now. You have to be persecuted by your government based on your race, your religion, and your nationality, political opinion, or membership to a particular social group, so this creates all kinds of problems. It increases the backlog of asylum cases, it has more people showing up to the border, families are essentially let down and then, the other thing is they can't return back to their home countries because these gangs are just dominating a lot of large regions of these countries, so the U.S. really needs to negotiate and work in better cooperation with these Northern Triangle countries. We can, of course, offer intelligence and other forms of assistance, but there needs to be more pressure put on these Northern Triangle governments in our countries because they're simply not doing enough to curb this problem that is existing in our country and also in their own countries.

Preston:
Yeah, that's a fantastic point and that I mean, that really gets to the root of the issue, which is that these gangs do have such a huge reach in their home countries and that these governments don't necessarily have the tools, the willpower to combat them. And really until that changes, there's these gangs are gonna always exist. And so, I think you bring up a good point for advocating, for kind of a two-prong method where from our state department and from our foreign policy outlook, we're able to help these countries to give them ideas on how to stop these gangs. But here at home we have to be really vigilant in cracking down on the gangs here because a lot, especially if you're talking about drug sales and things like that, a lot of the customers are in the United States and that's one of the issues that we've always had dealing, particularly with the Mexican cartels, is that all of their profits come from selling drugs, people, whatever it be, in the U.S. and until our law enforcement is really able to tackle the issue here, we're not really able to address the root cause in the country of origin.

Spencer:
And one thing that Matthew mentioned, I wanna touch on a little bit further, is that right now our immigration system is backlogged and our immigration law enforcement officers, whether with ICE or CBP are just overwhelmed. So, one thing I think that local law enforcement agencies can do that would be extremely helpful, is to take part in the 287(g) Program. Essentially what this does, is it allows, after some training, it allows local law enforcement to help ICE expedite the process of transferring and ultimately deporting illegal aliens, and of course most of local law enforcement officers are going to come in contact with gang members when they’re selling drugs or committing crimes at a local level. And so, if you've got an office that's already taking advantage of this program, it takes a lot off the plate of our already overwhelmed officers at ICE and CBP.

Preston:
Yeah, Spencer that's a great point. I think that's as good a point as any to end on today. We hope that for you listening at home, that you've enjoyed today's episode and perhaps learned something new about the danger that criminal alien gangs pose, both to American citizens and American cities, but also to the immigrant communities that are in our cities and in our country. And as a reminder, we're going to be releasing a new episode every other Monday. There is going to be a brief pause during the holiday season but we'll be back in January to continue with this podcast. Our episodes are available on most platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. You can also visit our website FAIRus.org and our twitter handle @FAIRimmigration to access these episodes. So please spread the word and share this podcast with people that you think may be interested in learning more about immigration and its impact on the United States and until next time, this has been Understanding Immigration presented by FAIR.