Thread: MS-13 is ‘taking over the school,’ one teen warned before she was killed

MS-13 is ‘taking over the school,’ one teen warned before she was killed


By Michael E. Miller March 9 at 9:08 PM Email the author


Elizabeth Alvarado and Rob Mickens, parents of slain Brentwood High student Nisa Mickens, are still mourning their daughter at their home in Brentwood, N.Y. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post)

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — The old minivan appeared near the school on a Tuesday morning, its Illinois plates the only thing out of place in the blue-collar suburbs of central Long Island. But as backpack-toting teenagers passed by on their way to Brentwood High, the van’s doors suddenly swung open. Out sprang members of the violent street gang MS-13, armed with baseball bats.

They attacked three 16-year-old students they suspected of being rivals before driving off. When police spotted the van in the same neighborhood the following afternoon and surrounded it at gunpoint, the MS-13 members were in the midst of trying to abduct a fourth.

“We were going to take him somewhere private and beat him to death,” said Miguel Rivera, 20, according to a Suffolk County indictment.
The Dec. 6 arrests of Rivera and four others thwarted what police say would have been the sixth murder of a Brentwood High School student by MS-13 in less than two years. But the incident also shook the school for another reason.

All but one of those arrested attended Brentwood, according to Suffolk County police. Three were unaccompanied minors who had been caught at the border and then placed in the community by a federal refugee program.

From New York to Virginia to Texas, schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?

For the past year, the Trump administration has waged a nationwide crackdown on MS-13. Nowhere has this effort been more intense than in Suffolk County, where police say the gang has committed 27 murders since a surge of unaccompanied minors began arriving in 2013.

[Trump’s MS-13 crackdown: Going after suspected gang members for immigration violations]

In his January State of the Union address, Trump recounted the story of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, two Brentwood High students killed by MS-13 on Sept. 13, 2016.

“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school,” the president said as the girls’ parents, who had been invited to watch the speech at the Capitol, wiped away tears.

Evelyn Rodriguez and Freddy Cuevas, parents of a girl prosecutors say MS-13 killed, wipe away tears during President Trump’s State of the Union speech. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Faced with an influx of scores of unaccompanied minors and an uptick in gang violence, Brentwood High has been criticized both for doing too little and too much to address the problem.

A $110 million federal lawsuit, filed in December by Kayla’s mother, claims administrators failed to protect her 16-year-old, allowing MS-13 to create an “environment filled with fear within the school.”

Meanwhile, a class-action suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration alleges the school went too far, hastily labeling kids as gang members and leading to their wrongful imprisonment.

School officials say they walk a fine line, reporting illegal activity while respecting students’ rights.

“We can see a gang member coming a mile away,” said Carlos Sanchez, safety director for the Brentwood Free Union School District. “The problem is that it’s not against the law to be a gang member, even if they identify themselves as MS.”
‘They failed my daughter’

Located 50 miles from Manhattan’s skyscrapers one way and the Hamptons’ oceanfront estates the other, Brentwood High School serves a community of 60,000 that was once largely Irish and Italian, then Puerto Rican and now nearly half Central American.

The sprawling school’s corridors are a maze adorned with inspirational messages like “Look for Rainbows” and “Believe and Succeed.” Only a few signs on classroom doors hint at the school’s transformation in recent years.

“I work with and for undocumented students and families,” one reads.

Starting in 2013, thousands of unaccompanied minors — most from Central America — began entering the United States illegally from Mexico each month, many turning themselves in to authorities. More than 200,000 have been detained, screened and then placed with relatives by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Nearly 5,000 have been sent to Suffolk County.

Schools are required by law to enroll and educate these students. At Brentwood High, the student population soared to 4,500, making it one of the largest high schools in the state.

“We had to open many more classes and hire more teachers,” recalled Wanda Ortiz-Rivera, the school district’s head of bilingual education.


The main entrance to Brentwood High, one of New York’s largest secondary schools. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post)

But the challenge went beyond language. Many of the new students were years behind in their education. Some had never gone to school and couldn’t read or write in any language.

Brentwood had long been overwhelmingly Hispanic, but the sudden surge in enrollment led to new tensions.

“There were a lot of Salvadoran people, Salvadoran people we don’t like,” said Mabel Castaño, a friend of Nisa’s and Kayla’s who said she attended Brentwood High for 18 months. “Some of them would say they had family members in MS-13. They’d say, ‘I’m going to get my brother or my uncle or my cousin on you.’ ”

[MS-13 gains recruits and power in U.S. as teens surge across the border]

Sanchez, the school district safety director, said MS-13 had long been overshadowed by gangs like the Bloods and Latin Kings.

“The last couple of years, when we had the unaccompanied children coming, that’s when we saw the change,” he said. By providing vulnerable newcomers with a sense of belonging, MS-13 “became a powerhouse.” A deadly one.

First, a former Brentwood student was fatally shot by the gang in November 2015, police say. Then Brentwood students began to go missing. A 15-year-old Ecuadoran named Miguel Garcia-

Moran vanished one February evening.

Two months later, Oscar Acosta, a 19-year-old Salvadoran, left home to play soccer and never returned. And in June 2016, Jose Peña-Hernandez, 18, a suspected MS-13 member, disappeared, too.
1:49
What is MS-13?
Here is what you need to know about MS-13, a street gang with an international reach.(Video: Claritza Jimenez/Photo: ULISES RODRIGUEZ/The Washington Post)

Three missing immigrant teens didn’t draw much attention to Brentwood. But that would change with the killings of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens.

Kayla, a basketball player from a Puerto Rican family, had first clashed with MS-13 two years earlier at Brentwood’s Freshman Center, where gang members spat on her, stole or broke her things and taunted her, according to her mother’s lawsuit.

Things escalated in summer school, when an MS-13 member threatened her with a knife, then continued to attend Brentwood High, the lawsuit says. “She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school. It’s like they’re everywhere,’ ” said Evelyn Rodriguez, who has become the face of MS-13 victims.

Rodriguez said she and her daughter reported the bullying to school administrators, who promised the knife-wielding student wouldn’t be allowed back. But when Kayla, 16, who had exchanged online taunts with MS-13, showed up for classes that fall, he was still there, the lawsuit alleges.

After a confrontation at Brentwood, federal prosecutors say, MS-13 put a “greenlight” — or kill order — on Kayla, and members made a “throat slicing gesture” toward her at school, the lawsuit says.

A week later, she was walking home one evening with Nisa, a basketball teammate one day shy of her 16th birthday, when MS-13 members spotted them and attacked with a machete and baseball bats, according to prosecutors. The girls were beaten to death.

“They failed my daughter,” Rodriguez said of school officials.

Brentwood’s principal and the superintendent declined interview requests. The school district has asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit as baseless.


Evelyn Rodriguez, who has filed a $110 million lawsuit against school administrators, stands beside a memorial for her daughter, Kayla Cuevas. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post)

Tensions in the school and the community quickly boiled over as Bloods and Latin Kings banded together to go after MS-13, police said. Two students told The Post that they were stopped by a car full of people in red clothing who asked whether they had seen anyone wearing blue, a color sometimes worn by MS-13. Another had his blue shirt burned in front of him, school officials announced.

A week after the murders, while students and teachers mourned the girls at a funeral parlor, police discovered the remains of Acosta and Garcia-
Moran across town. They found *Peña-Hernandez’s body a month later.

‘Everybody is desperate’

Arrests of alleged MS-13 members nationwide nearly doubled during Trump’s first year in office. In Suffolk County, 219 have been arrested since Kayla and Nisa were killed, according to police.

But that crackdown has led to a backlash from activists and immigration attorneys — in Brentwood and beyond — who accuse schools of feeding authorities false or flimsy allegations of gang affiliation against students.

[‘People here live in fear’: MS-13 menaces a community seven miles from the White House]

“Schools are supposed to be a safe haven for kids to learn,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “But they are actually turning into dangerous places for kids to be because they are being branded as gang members . . . by virtue of spurious allegations and unfounded, generalized and racist assumptions.”

Brentwood was the only school mentioned by name in the ACLU’s class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration last year. The suit claimed Brentwood’s “unsubstantiated allegation of gang affiliation” against an unaccompanied minor had led to the then-16-year-old’s wrongful arrest and five-month imprisonment.

Bryan Johnson, the teen’s immigration attorney, said the information the school passed along to police, and eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wasn’t just inaccurate. It may have been illegal. Federal law protects schools from having to disclose student records, with few exceptions.

“The school let itself be co-opted by law enforcement,” he said.

At a bond hearing, an immigration judge dismissed the gang allegations and set the teen free. Nearly 30 other local teens have also been released, but ICE is still trying to deport them, Johnson said. His client is so afraid to return to Brentwood High, he’s being home-schooled.
But for some in the community, that fear pales in comparison to the specter of more MS-13 slayings.

“They should be a little more careful in how they are investigating these kids,” said Barbara Medina, a crime victim advocate. “But everybody is desperate. They want to get these kids off the streets.”


A school bus passes a memorial honoring Brentwood High classmates Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens. (Michael Noble Jr. for The Washington Post)

[She thought she’d saved her daughter from MS-13 by smuggling her to the U.S. She was wrong.]

Of the six charged with Kayla’s and Nisa’s killings, at least two attended Brentwood High, according to people close to the case.
“We’re providing the best, safest environment we can, working with the school district,” said Suffolk County Police Deputy Inspector John M. Rowan.

Sanchez, the school district safety director, denied that administrators improperly passed information to the police. He said Brentwood had doubled its security since the killings and adopted a more “proactive” approach.

“My people know who’s who in the school, and they know who the shot-callers are,” he said, scoffing at the idea that innocent students had been branded as MS-13. “If you walk like a duck and quack like a duck, then why are you saying you’re not a duck?”

Timothy Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney and former police commissioner who’s made a name for himself combating MS-13, said schools are in a “tough spot.”

“They are educators and caretakers. They are not police,” he said. “But they are with the kids all day long, so they are often in the best position to see who’s having problems. Who’s throwing gang signs. Who’s writing things in their notebook that indicate gang activity.”

Sini said Suffolk County law enforcement shares its criteria for labeling someone a gang member with schools but not the public.

“Some of it’s obvious. Some of it’s not,” he said. “And this is when activists get nervous. If a kid is wearing white Adidas, does that mean he’s a gang member? No, of course not. But the bottom line is that I could look at a pair of sneakers on a kid right now and tell you whether it’s an indicator of gang membership. That’s a fact.”

Activists and immigration attorneys say that attitude is dangerous. Though gang membership itself is not a crime, accusations can be enough to lead ICE to again detain an unaccompanied minor.

“It’s like the Salem witch trials,” said Johnson, the immigration attorney. “Everything is rumors and gossip.”
Students say the suspicion can be stifling.

One Salvadoran American honor student at Brentwood said the school allows students to wear Salvadoran soccer jerseys only on special days, but even then, she felt too scared. Her younger brother liked Nike Cortez shoes, she said, but couldn’t wear them “because those are the gang’s shoe.”

Elvin Brogsdale, 18, a recent graduate, said he’d nearly been suspended for unwittingly wearing a shirt with an image sometimes used by MS-13: a grim reaper.

“Everyone is so scared, so tense,” he said. “It didn’t used to be like this.”

A day after the four Brentwood High students were arrested in the December van attacks, Rodriguez received a phone call. It was a recorded message from the school district’s superintendent.

“Please know that it is our number-one priority,” he said, “to keep your sons and daughters safe in school.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.bfa5e48d4719

obama admin should be held accountable for allowing anti-trafficking programs to be abused by the "fear" cons. He welcomed ms-13. The acts are still in use & lady daca said she has to let them in. The gov't is really taking their time clearing this up as they are still coming and being taken in, given monies, healthcare, free schooling plus expensive ELS teachers.

gw also re-authorized this act before leaving office as did trump in 9/17 - of course, obama kept in going and improved everything for them - used our border patrol to bus or fly them @ the country. obama treated potential or already ms-13 gang members like gold - full welcome mat.

The UAC deal is tied in with the trafficking act that keeps getting re-authorized. Anti trafficking is a good thing but untie the UAC part. Congress is doing nothing, bills were introduced a yr ago and just sit - ryan is supposed to whip up movement and does not because he is an open borders advocate and many politicians want the cheap labor for their constituents with businesses.

Really don't think these countries came up with this loophole twist to an anti-trafficking/slavery act themselves - it was promoted to them and has been allowed to be abused for 10yrs. The central americans were pegged to be the "next" cheap labor trove. More criminals amongst us - they don't change just by being here, they bring their ways with them.

WaPo: Yes, MS-13 Threat Is Real — And It’s Killing Kids

ED MORRISSEY Posted at 8:41 am on March 12, 2018




When Donald Trump brought up the multinational gang MS-13 in his State of the Union speech, critics accused him of either exaggerating or exploiting the threat in order to push his hard-line immigration policies. A lengthy feature from the Washington Post suggests otherwise. One high school in Brentwood narrowly avoided a sixth murder by MS-13 students in a year with the capture of a hit squad, and one of the murder victims told her mother right before getting killed that MS-13 was “taking over the school.”

And it’s not the only school to have been taken over:

The Dec. 6 arrests of Rivera and four others thwarted what police say would have been the sixth murder of a Brentwood High School student by MS-13 in less than two years.

But the incident also shook the school for another reason.

All but one of those arrested attended Brentwood, according to Suffolk County police. Three were unaccompanied minors who had been caught at the border and then placed in the community by a federal refugee program.

From New York to Virginia to Texas, schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?

For the past year, the Trump administration has waged a nationwide crackdown on MS-13. Nowhere has this effort been more intense than in Suffolk County, where police say the gang has committed 27 murders since a surge of unaccompanied minors began arriving in 2013.

Be sure to read the whole piece, a well-balanced feature that also includes immigration attorneys and civil-liberties groups claiming that the threat is overblown. However, the report from the Post’s Michael Miller paints a different picture overall, one in which a lack of attention has turned schools into battlegrounds.That’s not to say those gang problems didn’t exist prior to the arrival of MS-13. Brentwood’s infiltration by MS-13, for instance, has fueled a rise in gang violence from the Latin Kings and Bloods, who have responded with reprisals to their eclipse by MS-13.

The Latin Kings and Bloods are mainly US-based gangs, however. MS-13’s impact comes directly from immigration policies that allowed unaccompanied minors entering illegally to be released, especially during the surge in 2013. The Office of Refugee Resettlement placed these minors in places like Brentwood, Suffolk, and other areas of the US, but their screening somehow missed MS-13 infiltration. Now high schools and local police are getting overwhelmed by this violent and virulent gang to the point where students are going missing and teachers and administrators can do little to stop it.

The Trump administration has stepped up federal enforcement efforts, but they’re still playing catch-up. The Department of Justice’s Operation Matador arrested 220 suspected MS-13 gang members in Mineola, New York in January, not long before the State of the Union address, but that appears to be a small percentage of the problem in that area. Critics claim that the arrests, which involved Brentwood High students, was too overbroad:

Some parents and activists say some of those included in the tally are innocent teenagers who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, spending weeks locked in maximum-security detention centers based on flimsy and false allegations of gang activity. Civil liberties lawyers say that in some cases their alleged “activity” was wearing a black T-shirt or making a hand gesture.

“They said we have a warrant for your arrest and we don’t have to explain anything to you now. We will tell you when you come with us,” one teenager, who asked not to be named because she is afraid of being deported, told the AP in Spanish. “Later, they told me I had been associated with gangs.”

The teenager said she was not a member of MS-13. She said she knew of people in MS-13, as do most people at Brentwood High School, a large high school 45 miles east of New York City. Maybe she’s talked with some of them in the hallway. …

Immigration attorney Dawn Guidone said she represented about seven teenagers detained on gang allegations, and at least two were deported. One student said all he did was wear blue to school, the color of the gang. Officials said he was associating with “known gang members.”

“But the gang member he was associating with sat next to him in math class,” Guidone said. “If that’s ‘associating,’ then I don’t know how to even deal with that.”

This is why prevention works better than round-ups. Prevention in the form of strong border barriers and immigration policies that rely on immediate returns rather than mass infiltration would not necessitate the kind of anti-gang enforcement measures that can get abused or misused in the manner described above. This is an excellent demonstration of why any attempt to normalize DACA has to be accompanied by measures which will remove the incentives for illegal border crossings, especially by unaccompanied minors.

This MS-13 threat could have largely been avoided had we fixed the border back in 2006 when Congress voted to authorize a wall, or if we had gotten serious about ending catch-and-release policies. It’s time to fix both problems.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/...tm_campaign=nl

This MS-13 threat could have largely been avoided had we fixed the border back in 2006 when Congress voted to authorize a wall, or if we had gotten serious about ending catch-and-release policies. It’s time to fix both problems

A good 10 yrs of this crap - it is very, very costly in many ways. Hope we can recoup. The crimes, murders, rapes, drugs, getting rid of them, more anchor babies with birthright citizenship. When will they clarify that misuse of written law!