Police: Undocumented MS-13 members stab, attack LI teen; the victim and suspects are
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Police: Undocumented MS-13 members stab, attack LI teen
Police say the victim and suspects are students at Huntington High…
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This is beginning to be an almost daily occurrence 😡
Teen stabbed in attack by 3 alleged MS-13 members from his high school on Long Island
Eyewitness News
Thursday, January 10, 2019 06:16PM
https://cdn.abcotvs.com/dip/images/5...abbing-img.jpg N.J. Burkett has the latest on the attack on a Long Island teen.
HUNTINGTON STATION, Long Island - Police said a teenager was stabbed in an attack by three MS-13 members from his high school behind a Long Island Burger King.
It happened on New York Avenue in Huntington Station around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The 16-year-old victim told police he was at the fast-food restaurant with friends when six of his classmates from Huntington High School entered and began staring at them menacingly.
Feeling uncomfortable, the victim and a friend left, and the three gang members followed them, wielding bats and knives, police said.
An altercation broke out in the parking lot, and that's when 19-year-old Ramon Arevalo Lopez allegedly stabbed the victim in the back. Another 16-year-old boy suffered a minor injury in the fight.
The stabbed 16-year-old was later taken to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.
The suspects took off, but police caught up with them and arrested them about a mile away.
Lopez and two other suspects, 20-year-old Nobeli Montes Zuniga and 17-year-old Oscar Canales Molina, were charged with second-degree assault.
Police said they had blood on their clothing and hands during the arrest. Molina was found with two knives, one in each of his socks.
According to police, Lopez entered the United States illegally on December 8, 2016. He was picked up by the Department of Homeland Security in October 2017, but a federal judge released him from custody in June.
Zuniga and Molina entered the country illegally as unaccompanied minors. Molina was picked up by DHS in July 2017 but released by a federal district judge in November 2017.
The suspects were arraigned Thursday. Bail was set for each at $35,000 cash/$75,000 bond.
Police continue to investigate the incident.
https://abc7ny.com/amp/police-undocu..._8qVV9j5dXiTq8
Immigration loophole allows MS-13 gang members to go free
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Sunday, January 13, 2019
If the Trump administration had its way, Ramon Arevalo Lopez and Oscar Canales Molina would have been either in detention or deported.
Instead, they were out on the streets — thanks to judges’ orders — where, according to police, they and another illegal immigrant delivered an MS-13 gang beat-down to two high school students in New York.
All three of the illegal immigrants entered the U.S. in 2016 as unaccompanied alien children, meaning they crossed the border without parents — a status that earned them a quick release into the country, where they were quickly reunited with their family and began to live while awaiting deportations that never came.
For Homeland Security Department officials, it’s the latest sign of a legal system that stymies their efforts to oust dangerous figures.
“One of the loopholes we are imploring Congress to close could have prevented this gruesome attack,” said Katie Waldman, a Homeland Security spokeswoman.
The three illegal immigrants got into a melee outside a Burger King in Huntington Station, New York, one afternoon last week. One of the teens was stabbed in the back, according to local news reports.
Authorities didn’t have a specific motive for the attack but said the victims were inside eating, saw the boys they knew from high school giving them menacing looks, and decided to leave.
The three illegal immigrants were found later with bloodstained hands and clothes, and their names popped up as MS-13 members in a check of a gang-records database.
Why they were in the country and out on the streets that day is one of the more bizarre twists of U.S. legal policy on illegal immigrants.
Mr. Arevalo Lopez showed up at a California border crossing three months shy of his 18th birthday in December 2016, during the second major wave of illegal immigration under President Obama.
Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and a Clinton-era court settlement, the Flores agreement, unaccompanied children traveling without parents are required to be processed by immigration authorities and quickly released to social workers, and from there to sponsors.
They are deemed unaccompanied even if they have family in the U.S., which Mr. Arevalo Lopez did. His mother and her partner, as well as a brother, lived in New York.
Under the law, Mr. Arevalo Lopez was quickly sent to live with them while his immigration case was pending. Thanks to a massive backlog in the immigration courts, his next court date is still more than two years ago.
He was an 18-year-old freshman at the local public school — at a time when most 18-year-olds are either seniors or in college.
Suffolk County has become a hotbed for Hispanic gangs in recent years, rivaling the Washington, D.C., area for homicides and extortion related to MS-13.
At some point, authorities say, Mr. Arevalo Lopez became involved with MS-13 — whether that happened before he arrived or whether he was recruited in the area. Authorities say both options are common, with the gang sometimes seeking to get members in the U.S. by having them pose as unaccompanied alien children, while those already in the U.S. make prime recruits.
Ten months after his arrival in the U.S., Mr. Arevalo Lopez was questioned and then arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on suspicion of gang membership.
After several months in ICE custody, attorneys asked an immigration judge to release him on bond. When that was refused, the lawyers went to federal district court.
In June a 95-year-old federal judge — Robert W. Sweet, who has been sitting on the bench since the Carter administration — ordered Mr. Arevalo Lopez released, saying he had been held too long for a minor.
Judge Sweet said even though Mr. Arevalo Lopez had long since turned 18, he was still to be protected as an unaccompanied minor because he was three months shy of that age when he was caught.
“A birthday shall not result in detention,” he ruled.
Oscar Canales Molina, 17, was also ordered released by a federal judge, in late 2017, according to news reports.
He entered the U.S. by sneaking across the border in July 2016.
Nobeli Montes Zuniga, 20, sneaked across the border three months earlier.
The immigration courts are so backed up that Mr. Montes Zuniga’s next deportation hearing, like Mr. Arevalo Lopez‘s, isn’t until 2021. Mr. Canales Molina doesn’t even have a hearing set.
All three are now charged with assault with intent to cause physical harm, and ICE has placed detainer requests on them, meaning they are slated to be deported once they serve any sentences.
Without those criminal charges, Ms. Waldman said, unaccompanied alien children stand almost no danger of being deported, despite their illegal status.
Of the 31,754 unaccompanied minors apprehended from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in fiscal year 2017 — when Mr. Arevalo Lopez was caught — some 98 percent are still in the U.S.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ole-releases-/
