New York Times
By Liz Robbins and Michael D. Shear
May 23, 2018
A week after President Trump used the word “animals” to describe dangerous criminals who enter the country illegally, he traveled to the epicenter of MS-13 gang killings on Wednesday to press his demands for tougher immigration laws.
Robert Mickens, a grieving father, told the president that the murder of his teenage daughter by MS-13 members validated Mr. Trump’s crusade to eradicate the gang by shutting America’s borders to violent criminals.
“Obviously, this is a very touchy subject because there is immigration involved,” Mr. Mickens said while his wife wept quietly by his side at a forum on Long Island organized by the White House.
“America is based off immigration. Everybody who came here wanted the American dream,” said Mr. Mickens, whose daughter, Nisa Mickens, was killed in 2016. “The American dream is still there. But if you’re going to come here with acts of violence, you can stay in your own country with that, because we don’t need it here anymore.”
The emotional moment came during a highly stage-managed event in which Mr. Trump came to Long Island for the second time as president to address the problem of MS-13 — a transnational gang that has ties to El Salvador and uses machetes to kill — and to insist on the passage of tougher immigration laws.
Outside the Morrelly Homeland Security Center, both a large group of immigrant rights advocates and a smaller group of supporters for Mr. Trump chanted in a circuslike atmosphere. Inside the tight room of about 150 formally dressed officials, law enforcement officers and the families of five victims of the gang, the atmosphere was one of subdued defiance.
Mr. Trump again described gang members as “animals,” mocking critics who had rebuked his earlier comments as meanspirited toward all immigrants. And he described in graphic detail the gruesome killings that he said should move the country’s political leadership to toughen “horrible” immigration laws.
“In Maryland, MS-13 gang members are accused of stabbing a man 100 times, decapitating him and ripping out his heart,” Mr. Trump said during the discussion.
Mr. Trump has sought to make MS-13 the face of immigration dangers since before he became president.
He has appeared at times to suggest that the vast majority of immigrants flowing into the United States from Mexico are members of the brutal gang. In fact, of the tens of thousands of people apprehended at the border in the fiscal year that ended in September, only 228 were members of MS-13, down from 437 in 2014, according to Customs and Border Protection.
The president has also linked the migration of young people fleeing Central America with gang members who exploit “loopholes” in the law to gain residency. These loopholes, according to immigrant advocates, are, in fact, legal protections for children escaping gang violence or family abuse.
On the dais, Mr. Mickens and his wife, Elizabeth Alvarado, were joined by Evelyn Rodriguez and Freddy Cuevas, the parents of Kayla Cuevas. All four had also attended the State of the Union address in January and have spoken out ever since their children were killed in September 2016. Ms. Alvarado wore a black T-shirt with her daughter’s picture on the front and “Justice for Nisa” on the back.
In the audience, the families of three of the four young men killed by MS-13 behind a soccer field in Central Islip in April 2017 sat wiping their eyes.
Lourdes Banegas, whose son, Michael Lopez, was killed in the April attack, said before Mr. Trump’s remarks that she supported the president’s efforts to go after MS-13. But she said his anti-immigrant language can be difficult to hear.
“Those that killed my son are animals. That’s true,” Ms. Banegas said. “They deserve to be deported. But since they are Latinos, and we are all also Latinos, they clump us all in together. That’s the problem.”
Carlos Lopez, Michael’s father, said he agreed with Mr. Trump’s call for a crackdown on the gang. Otherwise, he said, “there is going to be dead body, after dead body, after dead body, the way they found my son.”
“But he also never speaks ill of the white kids shooting up schools,” Mr. Lopez added. “Aren’t they also animals? And they’re American, right?”
Mr. Trump used the forum to announce that his administration is considering a plan in which some countries would lose foreign aid every time one of their citizens came into the United States illegally. He said that “we’re looking at our whole aid structure, and it’s going to be changed very radically,” but offered no details.
For most of the hour, Mr. Trump solicited — and received — praise for his immigration efforts from federal and local law enforcement officials who said they wholeheartedly agreed about the need to confront the horrors of gang violence.
Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who has clashed with the president over the Russia investigation, lauded Mr. Trump.
“Under your leadership, Attorney General Sessions has made violent crime and illegal immigration a top priority,” Mr. Rosenstein said before explaining the legal challenges of toughening up enforcement efforts. Mr. Trump returned the praise: “Thank you, Rod, very much. Very nice.”
Geraldine Hart, the Suffolk County police commissioner, described the shock to her community from multiple MS-13 killings over the last several years, including the “senseless, violent and outrageous” murders of Ms. Mickens and Ms. Cuevas.
From January 2016 through April 2017, the Suffolk County police said there were 17 murders committed by MS-13. In Nassau County last year, there were six MS-13 murders. According to the Nassau police commissioner, Patrick J. Ryder, seven of the nine people arrested in those cases were undocumented.
Suffolk County, the eastern end of Long Island, has accepted the largest numbers of unaccompanied children in the country since 2014 — 4,975, she said. She and Mr. Ryder pointed out that these children were especially vulnerable to recruitment to the gang.
On this issue, the local participants brought a nuance to a challenge that the president often paints as black and white. The fight against MS-13, they said, could not be one of only hard-line immigration policies, but must include community policing and early gang intervention programs to help these children.
Mr. Ryder declared the importance of “not burning bridges” with the immigrant community, and trying to make them feel comfortable reporting crimes.
Ms. Rodriguez asked for more money for professionals in schools to assist teachers and the administration. “People have to realize that these situations originate in the schools and it comes out into the streets,” she said.
Formed in central Los Angeles by Salvadoran refugees fleeing a civil war in the 1980s, MS-13 is believed to have 10,000 members in 40 states, according to the F.B.I., but predominantly in just three metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, Long Island and the region outside Washington.
The faces around the table on Wednesday underscored a jarring difference between the president’s rhetoric and the reality on Long Island, where many of the victims of MS-13 violence are immigrants themselves.
In a news release before the event, the White House did not note that Michael Lopez and his cousin, Jefferson Villalobos, 18, were both undocumented immigrants when they were killed by the gang. Justin Llivicura, 16, who was born in New York to Ecuadorean immigrant parents, and Jorge Tigre, 18, who immigrated from Ecuador when he was 10, were the other two victims.
During the event, however, Mr. Trump asked their families to stand and be recognized. After the round table, the president shook their hands. “Thank you for coming,” said Bertha Ullaguari, Mr. Tigre’s mother, who has a green card.
Barbara Medina, an advocate for victims, had arranged for several of the immigrant families to be at the event.
“It puts a face to the entire picture,” Ms. Medina said after watching the president shake their hands. “It was more important for the families to be noticed.” She said that Blanca Zhicay, Mr. Llivicura’s mother, told her at the end: “They are finally recognizing that we are human, too. We cry for our children; we mourn for them still.”
Outside the White House event on Wednesday, supporters of Mr. Trump’s hard-line positions prayed, cheered and waved handmade signs and flags.
But critics like Desmond Zantua, 29, who works for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Mr. Trump’s “policies and rhetoric wholesale link immigrant communities with gang affiliation.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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