MS-13 gang members commit savage crimes — beheading their targets with machetes, hacking off their hands, burning them to death, dismembering them.
Demonic acts. If you think these crimes won’t happen where you live, keep reading.
The gang’s rule is “Kill, rape, control.” MS-13 brings terror to neighborhoods and even schoolyards.
In the New York City area, MS-13 has been linked to more than 65 prosecuted murders since 2009.
President Joe Biden couldn’t care less.
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is cracking down, jailing tens of thousands of suspected gang members and causing others to flee that country.
But not Biden.
He’s shepherding migrants into America and releasing them as fast as possible without vetting them for gang affiliations or criminal records.
The deadly consequences were on display May 23 when the House Judiciary Committee heard about the murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton.
Kayla was raped, stabbed and bludgeoned to death in July 2022. Maryland police arrested a 16-year old MS-13 member.
He had entered the United States three months earlier as an unaccompanied minor and been given a Biden-style warm welcome.
Had Border Patrol vetted him, it would have learned he’d been arrested in El Salvador for “illicit association” with MS-13.
Aberdeen, Md., police found that out — too late — with one phone call to Salvadoran authorities.
When arrested, the teen had tattoos that linked him to MS-13.
The House investigation concluded federal authorities had “failed to implement basic screening and vetting measures” and showed “callous disregard for the safety of Americans.”
Former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who served under President Donald Trump and then Biden until August 2021, testified that the Biden administration is “laser-focused on expediting the processing and flow of migrants into the US” and “refused to accept the significant vulnerability this creates.”
Any migrant under 18, or feigning to be, gets kid-glove treatment now.
No wonder the number of unaccompanied minors has surged more than 400% under Biden.
About 30% of MS-13 gang members Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested in recent years entered America as unaccompanied minors. It’s a racket.
If you’re thinking kids with teddy bears, you’re mistaken.
More than 70% of actual unaccompanied minors are teens aged 15 to 17, and some adults falsely pose as minors.
Rep. John Rutherford told a House hearing about a 24-year-old Honduran man who posed as an unaccompanied minor, then murdered a resident of the Florida Republican’s district: The Border Patrol’s “default position seems to be, ‘If you can’t figure out who they are, let them in.’”
Vetting is minimal. Federal authorities have removed just 409 of 345,000 unaccompanied minors in the last three years, a minuscule one-third of 1%.
Unaccompanied minors are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services to be housed an average of 28 days with schooling and recreation, costing taxpayers $18,000 per minor. Then they are placed with a guardian somewhere in the United States.
The top five destinations are Texas, California, Florida, New York and New Jersey.
New Yorkers need to know more about the so-called unaccompanied minors getting off buses at Port Authority and being placed in local public schools.
Biden’s see-no-evil approach is the exact opposite of his predecessor’s.
Trump tagged MS-13 as public enemy No. 1. In a State of the Union message, he recounted how MS-13 filled a Suffolk County high school with fear and slaughtered two girls there.
Calling MS-13 “animals,” he detained as many suspected gang members as possible until they reached age 18 and could be handed over to ICE for likely deportation.
The liberal press bashed Trump’s approach, calling it “disproportionate to” the threat and denying that MS-13 is a “major criminal presence.”
They were wrong.
One week ago, an MS-13 gang member pleaded guilty in Suffolk County to luring an 18-year-old to a baseball field where he and other gang members beat the kid to death with a baseball bat and chopped him to bits with a machete.
Had enough?
Tell Biden to stop sending these MS-13 brutes to our communities.
As for Mayor Eric Adams’ new suggestion that New Yorkers open their homes to unvetted migrants: Who would be so reckless?
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey
