DREAMers Arrested in Nationwide Gang Crackdown

handcuffs
Associated Press

Federal immigration officials arrested nearly 1,400 gang members in a nationwide 6-week operation, including illegal immigrants gang members who had protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Altogether, 1,378 gang members were arrested by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, 1,098 of which already have federal or state criminal charges against them, according to a news release. Twenty-one of the members had pending murder charges against them, while another seven were facing rape allegations. The other 280 were arrested for being in the U.S. illegally.

Three of the gang members arrested in the ICE operation had protected status as illegal immigrants under the Obama-era DACA program. Since DACA’s inception, more than 1,500 illegal immigrants have had their protected status revoked after they were found to be involved with a gang or committed a crime.

DACA recipients are given protection by the federal government and since the Trump Administration has not ended the program, experts like Mark Krikorian have previously said that 800 new permits for protected DACA status can be granted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) every day.

“They’re still processing these work permits,” Krikorian told Breitbart Texas at the time. “That’s got to end at the absolute minimum.”

Additionally, of the 1,478 gang members arrested, 10 of them had crossed the U.S.-Mexico Brder as unaccompanied minors. Of those 10, nine were confirmed gang members and eight of those 10 were MS-13 specifically.

Most recently, Breitbart Texas reported on the continued resettlement of foreign unaccompanied minors into MS-13-prone regions of the U.S., despite experts pointing to evidence that this process allows foreign crime syndicates to flourish.

Since the beginning of the Fiscal Year, October 1, 2016, 651 unaccompanied minors were placed in Nassau County, which is home to one of the largest growing MS-13 gang population’s in the U.S. In neighboring Suffolk County, which has a widespread MS-13 gang problem in Brentwood and Central Islip, approximately 915 have been resettled in the region.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.