El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is cracking down on gangs, but not President Biden, columnist Betsy McCaughey says
MS-13 gang members commit savage crimes — beheading their targets with machetes, hacking off their hands, burning them to death, dismembering them.
Demonic acts. If you think these crimes won’t happen where you live, keep reading.
The gang’s rule is “kill, rape, control.” Members are required to kill. MS-13 brings terror to neighborhoods and even schoolyards. In the New York City area, MS-13 has been linked to more than 65 murders since 2009. President Joe Biden could care less.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is cracking down, jailing tens of thousands of suspected gang members and causing others to flee that country. But not Biden.
He’s shepherding migrants into the country and releasing them as fast as possible without vetting them for gang affiliations or criminal records.
The deadly consequences were on display May 23 when the House Judiciary Committee heard about the murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton. Hamilton was raped, stabbed and bludgeoned to death in July 2022. Local Maryland police arrested a 16-year-old MS-13 gang member. He had entered the U.S. just three months earlier and was welcomed into custody as an unaccompanied minor.
Had Border Patrol vetted him, they would have learned he had been arrested in El Salvador for “illicit association” with MS-13. Aberdeen, Maryland police found that out with one phone call to Salvadoran authorities.
When arrested, the teen had tattoos that linked him to MS-13. The House investigation concluded that federal authorities had “failed to implement basic screening and vetting measures” and showed “callous disregard for the safety of Americans.”
Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who served under former President Donald Trump and then Biden until August 2021, testified that the Biden administration is “laser-focused on expediting the processing and flow of migrants into the U.S.” and “refused to accept the significant vulnerability this creates.”
Any migrants under 18, or feigning to be, get kid-glove treatment by the Biden administration. No wonder the number of unaccompanied minors has surged more than 400% under Biden.
About 30% of MS-13 gang members arrested in recent years by Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered the U.S. as unaccompanied minors. It’s a racket.
If you’re thinking kids with teddy bears, you’re mistaken. Over 70% of actual unaccompanied minors are teens ages 15 to 17, and some adults falsely pose as minors.
Rep. John Rutherford (R-Fla.) told the House hearing about a 24-year-old Honduran man who posed as an unaccompanied minor, then murdered a resident of Rutherford’s district: “The (Border Patrol’s) default position seems to be, ‘If you can’t figure out who they are, let them in.'”
Vetting is minimal. Federal authorities have removed just 409 of 345,000 unaccompanied minors in the last three years, a minuscule one-twelve of 1%.
Unaccompanied minors are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services to be housed temporarily, with schooling and recreation costing taxpayers $18,000 per minor. Then they are placed with a guardian somewhere in the U.S.
The top five destinations are Texas, California, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
New Yorkers need to know more about the so-called unaccompanied minors getting off buses at Port Authority and being placed in local public schools.
Biden’s see-no-evil approach is the exact opposite of his predecessor’s. Trump tagged MS-13 public enemy No. 1. In a State of the Union message, he recounted how MS-13 filled a Suffolk County high school with fear and slaughtered two girls there.
Calling MS-13 “animals,” he detained as many suspected gang members as possible until they reached age 18 and could be handed over to ICE for possible deportation.
The liberal press bashed Trump’s approach, calling it “disproportionate to its impact” and denying that MS-13 is a “major criminal presence.” They were wrong.
One week ago in Suffolk County, an MS-13 gang member pleaded guilty to luring an 18-year-old man to a baseball field where he and other gang members beat the kid to death with a baseball bat and chopped him to bits with a machete, nearly amputating his hands.
Had enough?
Tell Biden to stop sending these MS-13 brutes to our communities.
As for Mayor Eric Adams’ new suggestion that New Yorkers open their homes to unvetted migrants, who would be so reckless?
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
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