Trump is wrong about MS-13. His rhetoric will make it worse.

Source: Washington Post

Trump is wrong about MS-13. His rhetoric will make it worse.

By José Miguel Cruz January 31 at 10:54 AM
José Miguel Cruz is director of research in the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. He has conducted research on Central American gangs since 1996.

President Trump claimed Tuesday night in the State of the Union address that the changes he wants to U.S. immigration laws are needed to keep Americans safe. The central piece of evidence in his argument was MS-13, the deadly gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha.

“Tonight, I am calling on the Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13 and other criminal gangs to break into our country,” Trump said. He also invited the parents of two young women killed by MS-13 members in Long Island to be his guests at the speech.

But in pointing to MS-13 to try to scare Americans into harsh new immigration restrictions, Trump is overstating the danger the gang poses here in the United States. Worse, by using the gang to demonize all Latino immigrants, Trump is building inner-city walls that alienate communities and risk making criminal organizations more powerful, both here and overseas.

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Things are different in the United States. According to Justice Department estimates, MS-13 is a small gang, compared with the Bloods, Crips and Almighty Latin King Nation. The estimated 10,000 MS-13 gang members in the United States account for less than 1 percent of the estimated 1.4 million total gang members in the country. According to CNN, 104 of the 1,300 gang members arrested during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweep last May — 8 percent — were linked to MS-13.

And the gang did not come from south of the border. MS-13 is as American-made as Google — or, for that matter, as Trump. MS-13 was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s by children of Salvadoran immigrants who fled a brutal civil war, a war which was substantially funded by the United States. The early members were teenagers who hung out on street corners and bonded around reefer and rock concerts, not unlike thousands of other kids living in Southern California’s underprivileged communities.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/31/trump-is-wrong-about-ms-13-and-his-rhetoric-will-make-it-worse/