Upon announcing his White House bid in 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump made it clear that he would prioritize a tough approach to illegal immigration if elected the following year.
Throughout his first term in office, it is clear that he worked hard to keep his promise — and additional proof can be found in recently released figures from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Thousands of suspected gang members
According to Breitbart, the agency’s year-end report was released on Sunday and includes the tallies of undocumented aliens taken into custody between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020.
ICE determined that its agents detained 103,603 immigrants during that period.
Of that number, nearly 9 in 10 were facing criminal charges or already had previous convictions. A shocking 34 individuals were either known or suspected terrorists.
Furthermore, another 4,067 of those apprehended were known or suspected gang members — including 675 believed to be associated with the dangerous MS-13 street gang.
The gang, which was founded in Los Angeles, California, but largely based in El Salvador, has earned a reputation for inflicting brutal violence in communities across the United States.
“The tragedy in all this”
During Trump’s 2018 State of the Union address, he honored the parents of Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, two New York teens who met a gruesome fate the previous year at the hands of MS-13 gang members as they walked home from high school.
Although these two victims were far from the only Americans targeted by the gang, some of the president’s critics have taken issue with his rhetoric.
After he referred to members of the gang as “animals” during a White House event, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) tweeted that Trump’s comments were not only “deeply offensive” but “racist.”
At the same time, many of the progressive Democrats criticizing the president have worked to stymie federal enforcement of immigration laws by instituting so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions. One city with such laws on the books is New York City, where federal authorities say an undocumented immigrant murdered a 92-year-old woman after he was shielding from deportation.
As the victim’s granddaughter, Daria Ortiz, said: “The tragedy in all of this is the fact that this could have been avoided had there been no sanctuary law. The tragedy is my grandmother is not ever going to be here again.”
The post ICE agents arrest more than 100,000 immigrants, 675 suspected MS-13 members: Annual report first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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