CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — The attorney general of the United States, Jeff Sessions, came on Friday to this Long Island area besieged by the transnational gang known as MS-13, and in a 20-minute speech to local police commissioners and sheriffs
vowed to eradicate the gang by cracking down on illegal immigration.
Mr. Sessions said the gang, which is
linked to El Salvador, carries a threat similar to the Colombian cartels and the mafia. He said it smuggled gang members across the United States border and recruited young immigrants.
“
The MS-13 motto is kill, rape and control,” Mr. Sessions said at the United States Courthouse here. “Our motto is justice for victims and consequences for criminals. That’s how simple it is. Prosecute them, and after they’ve been convicted,
if they’re not here lawfully, they’re going to be deported.”
Mr. Sessions talked tough, declaring that “this is the Trump era,” when the federal government would back law enforcement.
He said that he would add prosecutors to the Eastern District of New York. On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York had come to the area to announce that he would add 25 State Police officers to the gang-fighting efforts.
“I’m concerned that his response is anti-immigrant, which would lead to racial profiling Latinos, African-Americans,” said the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, the president of the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
“We cannot continue with this transporting across our border illegal immigrants who have not been properly vetted and actually are part of criminal organizations,” Mr. Sessions said.
La Mara Salvatrucha, shortened to MS-13,
originated as a street gang in Los Angeles in the 1980s, with members who were refugees from El Salvador. It developed into a transnational organization. Mr. Sessions said he was told that the gang had headquarters in the jails of El Salvador and had 30,000 members, 10,000 of them in the United States.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/nyregion/jeff-sessions-ms-13-gang-long-island.html?_r=0
