Trump to Come Down Hard on Illegal Immigration in Visit to Long Island
Against the backdrop of Suffolk County, Trump is set to talk about taking down the notorious MS-13 gang and push forward his immigration agenda
3 hrs ago
By Ray Villeda and Marc Santia
President Donald Trump will come down hard on illegal immigration during his visit to Long Island Friday, the White House Administration said Thursday night.
Trump is expected to speak at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood and ask for more resources to combat illegal immigration as well as push for his campaign promise for a border wall.
Against the backdrop of Suffolk County, Trump is set to talk about taking down the notorious MS-13 gang and push forward his immigration agenda. The gang is blamed for 17 murders in the county over the last year and a half.
Congressman Peter King, who represents Brentwood and will travel with the president from Washington, said Trump's appearance would send a signal to communities that have been shaken by the violent killings.
"It's absolutely devastating. And almost all of these killings have occurred in my district, within 20 minutes of my home," he said.
Evelyn Rodriguez, the mother of 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas, one of the young people allegedly killed by MS-13, told News 4 Friday she was nervous but excited to see the president. She wants to make sure the president will support Suffolk police and leadership in fighting gang violence.
She'll also call on him to bring back funding for community programs to support kids.
"We want to see changes," she said.
Cuevas' father Freddy called the gangs "terrorism of individuals, doing the wrong thing, ruining our community, threatening the school district."
A senior administration official tells News 4 the president will also address the law enforcement community, and call on congress to deliver, specifically asking for 10,000 more ICE officers. There are currently only 5,000 officers serving the entire country.
Trump wants more immigration judges to deal with the backlog of cases, the senior administration official said. He also wants the border wall, which the administration says will help stop the flow of illegal immigrants, which the administration says is behind the rising violent gang problem.
Immigrant advocates on Long Island have accused the president of politicizing the MS-13 gang problem to justify a crackdown on all undocumented immigrants. On Thursday afternoon, protesters gathered outside Suffolk Community College in Brentwood to condemn his visit.
“The presence of Donald Trump is only to create confusion and fear,” immigrant advocate Joselo Lucero said.
Although Trump’s visit to the island was not met with complete support, law enforcement officials say they're looking forward to it and are "extending a warm welcome" to the president.
“It’s certainly good to see national leaders and policy makers are paying attention to this issue,” said Suffollk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini. “Suffolk County police will keep doing what it’s doing.”
Trump chose Long Island to push forward his agenda because the senior administration official said the president believes Suffolk County is the epicenter of the MS-13 threat.
Trump has compared MS-13's "meanness" to that of al-Qaida and has promised he would rid the country of it.
Police officials say that since Jan. 1, 2016, there have been 17 murders by MS-13 members in Suffolk County, many of which have been in just two neighboring suburbs, Brentwood and Central Islip. Some victims were high school students whose remains turned up months after they vanished, hidden in wooded areas or found on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital.
The deaths began to get attention after best friends Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, both students at Brentwood High School, were beaten and hacked to death in September by a carload of gang members who spotted them walking down the street. Investigators said Cuevas had been feuding verbally with gang members.
One of their friends said he hopes Trump stays true to his word.
“For me I hope he does what he says and takes the bad ones and not the good ones,” Josh Cordero, a Brentwood High School senior, said. Cordero has felt the gang’s impact after losing his two classmates.
Cuevas' mother told News 4 in tears Friday, "Kayla used to tell me in anything I was doing, 'Mom, I always got your back.' So I know up in heaven, she really does have our back."
In April, three teenagers and a 20-year-old man were massacred in a park in Central Islip. Prosecutors said they were lured to the park and then ambushed by at least a dozen MS-13 members wielding machetes and other weapons. One person escaped.
Prosecutors said they were marked for death because some were suspected of being rival gang members - something their families denied.
Twenty people have been charged publicly in eight homicides in recent months. They include five people accused in the deaths of Mickens and Cuevas and 10 people in the Central Islip massacre.
All but a few of those charged in the deaths were citizens of El Salvador or Honduras who entered the U.S. illegally, according to law enforcement officials.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local...437111253.html
Protesters, supporters gather in Brentwood for Donald Trump visit
Updated July 28, 2017 2:40 PM
By Víctor Manuel Ramos
http://cdn.newsday.com/polopoly_fs/1...600/image.jpeg
Protestors rally against President Donald Trump's immigration policies at the Suffolk Police Department's Third Precinct in Bay Shore on Friday, July 28, 2017. Photo Credit: Newsday / Victor Ramos
Supporters and detractors of President Donald Trump gathered outside Brentwood college campus Friday afternoon to hear him address gang violence and how to root out MS-13 members from local communities.
As early as 1 p.m., scores of supporters and protestors had arrived just outside Suffolk County Community College to witness Trump’s arrival.
Herby Johnson, a union bricklayer from St. James was among a smaller crowd of about 70 Trump supporters, shouting back at protesters.
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Immigrant advocates chanting "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?" outside Suffolk's 3rd police precinct. They're upset about deportations pic.twitter.com/FEDn1gfVas
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Chant: "Immigrants are not to blame; no terror in our name." They want Suffolk to stop cooperating with Trump's immigration policies pic.twitter.com/5tf9ldiSpy
(video within tweet)
7:10 AM - Jul 28, 2017
He said he’s all in for some signature Trump and his policies.
“I think they should get rid of the gangs,” Johnson said. “I also like the idea that illegal immigrants should be deported... I’ve been in construction all my life and illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, have decimated my trade” by driving down wages.
Earlier in the day, more than 30 people, led by immigrant and civil rights groups, kicked off a day of combined protests against Trump’s policies outside the Suffolk Police Department’s Third Precinct in Bay Shore, outside Brentwood State Park and outside the college.
They were demonstrating against county police and sheriff departments cooperating with Trump’s deportation push.
Victoria Daza, an organizer with Long Island Jobs With Justice, labeled police and jail arrangements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “predatory policies” that lead to deportations when immigrants in the country illegally are arrested over minor offenses.
(video within tweet)
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James Thompson, 60, of Miller Place, talks about his support for President Trump at Brentwood rally opposite protests
9:51 AM - Jul 28, 2017
The group chanted “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” as police officers in uniform guarded the premises.
“Today is a very special day and it’s a special day because we have a very special visitor coming,” said Susan Gottehrer, Nassau director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “And this visitor peddles in many of the dark arts. He peddles in hate and he peddles in fear and he peddles in adolescent bullying and in threats, and, worse, he gets others to do his bidding.”
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Timothy Sini objected to protesters linking his department to indiscriminate immigration enforcement, saying its focus are criminals and gang members — not the immigrant community.
“Let’s be very clear. We’re talking about violent gang members,” Sini said. “We are not going to make apologies for cooperating with federal law enforcement authorities on serious dangerous, violent criminals... We’re focused like a laser on MS-13.”
Sini said he’s “very empathetic” with the immigrant community’s concerns and said only “a very small percentage of the undocumented population” is linked to gangs.
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Protesters in Brentwood chant, hold signs about immigration, LGBT rights, "Lock him up" outside @realDonaldTrump speech @Newsday
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9:44 AM - 28 Jul 2017
The emphasis that Trump is placing on an MS-13 crackdown and deportations has a corrosive effect in the immigrant communities, as the public comes to see them as a threat, advocates at the Bay Shore protest said.
“Over the past year, we’ve heard the narratives and rhetoric coming from the new administration: Mexicans are rapists; Muslims are terrorists that need to be banned and, now, Central Americans are criminals coming here to bring violence to our communities,” said Nathan Berger, an immigrants advocate with Rural and Migrant Ministry.
“We know this isn’t true and we know this to be racist,” Berger added, saying to local law enforcement that “if you are going to cooperate with the administration’s requests” on deportations “you are complicit with racism.”
Advocates from immigrant-advocacy, LGBT, women’s rights and labor groups spoke one after another at an outside rally that swelled to hundreds of protesters at one point.
They joined forces to reject Trump and his policies.
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“We are here today to stand united as one community against hate. We have a ‘Commander-in-Hate,’ not a Commander-In-Chief,” said David Kilmnick, chief executive of the LGBT Network in Woodbury. “He has failed at everything he’s done. He’s a psychopath; he’s delusional; he’s dangerous, and we are out here united today to stop him and tell him ‘Go home,’ ‘Go to Mar-a-Lago,’ ‘Get off Long Island, you are not welcome here.’”
While Trump spoke inside the college, two men shoved each other the parking lot at Brentwood State Park, where hundreds of protesters were gathered Friday afternoon to voice their opinions against Trump. Officers from the State Park Police, who were overseeing security at the event, diffused the altercation within seconds.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/p...ump-1.13858563
On Long Island, Trump highlights violence from MS-13 gang to push Congress on immigra
On Long Island, Trump highlights violence from MS-13 gang to push Congress on immigration
By David Nakamura July 28 at 8:27 AM
(video may be viewed at source link)
SELDEN, N.Y. -- President Trump on Friday warned of an uptick in violence from the transnational gang MS-13 that he said exploited weak political leadership and immigration enforcement to terrorize communities as the White House launched a renewed push to Congress to beef up funding for border security measures.
Trump's visit to a county racked by violence attributed to the gang — 17 murders over 18 months, according to local police — aimed to his message that lawmakers must do more to combat illegal immigration a “power and poignancy,” a White House aide told reporters in a briefing.
In stark language, Trump said MS-13 has stabbed, raped and murdered young people and "transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood stained killing fields. They’re animals. We cannot tolerate as a society the spilling of innocent, young, wonderful vibrant people."
(another video)
Trump, who campaigned on stricter border security, has in recent months begun highlighting the threat from MS-13, whose formal name is La Mara Salvatrucha, a gang formed in Los Angeles decades ago with ties to El Salvador and Honduras.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-ap...UMP.jpg&w=1484
President Trump, who campaigned on stricter border security, has in recent months begun highlighting the threat from the MS-13 gang, known formally as La Mara Salvatrucha. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
Speaking Friday before an audience of law enforcement officers at Suffolk County Community College, Trump blamed past administrations for failing to enforce immigration laws.
"For many years, they exploited America’s weak borders and immigration enforcement," Trump said of gangs such as MS-13. "They are there right now because of weak political leadership ... and in many cases police who are not allowed to do their job because they have a pathetic mayor or a mayor who does not know what’s going on."
A day after suffering a major political defeat on his bid to overturn the Affordable Care Act, after the Senate voted down a repeal measure, the president seemed buoyed in his return to Long Island, where he spent some of his youth. Trump spoke on stage in front of dozens of uniformed officers and a banner that read, "Protecting American lives." He received numerous ovations as he thanked law enforcement officers for their service and pledged to create policies to allow them to do their jobs better. The officers at one point chanted, "USA! USA!"
Trump boasted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are tougher than the criminal gangs, and at one point he encouraged police to be rougher with suspects who are apprehended, such as allowing them to hit their heads while putting them into police cars.
Addressing illegal immigrants, Trump said: "We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you and we will deport you."
Trump administration officials said they have begun implementing the president's directive to target MS-13 and other violent gangs and cartels. The Justice Department has requested funding for 300 additional federal prosecutors, said Rob Hur, the principal deputy attorney general, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled this week to El Salvador to meet with officials from the Northern Triangle — including Honduras and Guatemala — in an effort to coordinate enforcement efforts.
Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who traveled here with Trump aboard Air Force One, said his agency has arrested 3,311 gang members this year, including 100 in New York, a majority of whom were affiliated with MS-13.
“Targeting, arresting, and removing members of violent street gangs, such as MS-13, sends a clear message to criminal enterprises around the world: You are not welcome in the United States, and you'll find no harbor here,” Homan said.
Trump used his remarks to push Congress to boost funding for the administration's immigration crackdown, including the start of construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, 10,000 new ICE agents and 5,000 new Customs and Border Patrol officers, and to pass new laws to increase penalties on immigrants who enter the United States illegally, speed up deportations and penalize “sanctuary cities” that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The House approved legislation late Thursday that would allocate $1.6 billion to the wall, and administration officials said they will make a major push for that funding in budget deliberations with Congress over the coming months.
Yet immigrant rights advocates said the administration is inflating the dangers of illegal immigration to instill fear in the public as a way to build political support for its stricter policies.
In Trump’s first 100 days in office, ICE arrested 41,318 immigrants, up 37.6 percent over the same period last year. Almost 3 out of 4 of those arrested have criminal records, including gang members and fugitives wanted for murder. But the biggest increase by far is among immigrants with no criminal records.
Also, many members of MS-13 are U.S. citizens and are under 18 years old.
Maria Teresa Kumar, chief executive of Voto Latino, said the comments from Trump and his aides are "simply an attempt to incite fear as a means to justify aggressive deportation efforts and costly border security policies. Their generalizations of our community are simply untrue. On the contrary, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native born population and that gap continues to widen each year."
Homan acknowledged that Trump had broadened the pool of undocumented immigrants considered a priority for removal, but he said the numbers are misleading because the Obama administration had sought to protect broad categories of immigrants from deportation. The numbers of non-criminals had fallen to such low levels, Homan said, that even a modest increase boosts the percentages.
Over the first 100 days of the Trump administration, 30,473 criminals were arrested from Jan. 22 to April 29, an 18 percent increase from the same period in 2016, according to ICE. Arrests of immigrants with no criminal records reached nearly 11,000, an increase of about 150 percent.
“If we send the message that if you get into the country, you get by the Border Patrol, and don't get arrested by local law enforcement for another crime, and no one is looking for you — that is a magnet; that is a pull factor,” Homan said. “We got to stop that messaging. We got to tell people it's not okay to violate laws in this country.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ef914dff1d3f
