“MS-13 is ‘taking over the school,’ one teen warned before she was killed.”
That is the title of a Washington Post story from the weekend.
Obama’s illegal DACA amnesty has turned out to be a nightmare for American schools. At a time when we are encountering ubiquitous threats to school safety from our own troubled youth, even the Washington Post has now realized that DACA and the promise of “amnesty for children” have brought in some of the most violent “kids” from Latin America. Is it too much to ask that Republicans actually “do something” about the gratuitously imported danger of the Central American invasion, MS-13, rather than uphold sanctuary cities? Rather than grant even more amnesty? Is it too much to ask that they finally block the lower courts from unilaterally continuing a policy that has turned beautiful suburbs into MS-13 war zones?
Suffolk County, New York, was once a beautiful suburban and rural respite for New Yorkers looking to escape the tumultuous city that never sleeps. It is home to the famous Hamptons where many New York elites vacation. Yet thanks to Obama’s DACA and the subsequent surge of Central American youth across the border, Suffolk County is the new capital of MS-13 in America.
The Washington Post reports that with 27 MS-13-related murders in Suffolk County alone since the surge of unaccompanied “minors” following the promise of DACA amnesty, “Schools in areas racked by MS-13 violence are now struggling with a sobering question. What to do when the gang isn’t just in your community, but in your classrooms?” Nearly 5,000 of these UACs have been illegally settled in Suffolk County, and what was once a quiet and peaceful jurisdiction is now an MS-13 haven. Recently, the violence has spread into wealthy Nassau County to the west as well. A law that was designed to protect victims of child trafficking and treat them like refugees has now been used to inundate our schools with violent gang members who self-trafficked themselves over the border. They are not the victims; American schoolchildren and taxpayers are the victims.
The Post article chronicles the escalation of violence in one school that led to the death of two students Trump spoke of in his State of the Union address. But the author also reveals a broader cultural problem foisted upon this community by the surge in illegal immigration:
Schools are required by law to enroll and educate these students. At Brentwood High, the student population soared to 4,500, making it one of the largest high schools in the state.
“We had to open many more classes and hire more teachers,” recalled Wanda Ortiz-Rivera, the school district’s head of bilingual education.
But the challenge went beyond language. Many of the new students were years behind in their education. Some had never gone to school and couldn’t read or write in any language.
From the time DACA was announced in 2012 through 2014, the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended increased 490 percent, 444 percent, and 610 percent for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, respectively. The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) drafted a memo in 2014 asserting that 95 percent of the border-crossers interviewed cited the promise of amnesty as the primary factor behind their migration, not violence back home.
The Miami Herald reported at the height of the surge that “children are also being sent by families who believe they could qualify for immigration reform—if Congress ever acts on it—or for President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA.”
On June 13, 2014, the Washington Post, which now recognizes the problems with UACs but still obsessively supports DACA, admitted that the surge of tens of thousands of Central Americans was “driven in large part by the perception they will be allowed to stay under Obama administration’s immigration policies.”
Only four percent of all UACs have been deported, and the rest remain in our communities and schools, with the taxpayer shouldering the fiscal, cultural, and security burden.
Yet almost every Republican is silent about this issue and continues to promote DACA as a pristine solution rather than the cause of the crises in gang violence and school violence, as well as the worst drug crisis in American history.
The immoral burden and public safety threat our elective and illegal policies on sovereignty and immigration have placed on schools is best exemplified by the story of Abigail Hernandez in Rochester, NY. She is a 21-year-old DACA recipient who threatened to shoot up the high school she squatted at just two days after the Parkland shooting. Police found a shotgun at her home. Oh, and by the way, immigrants, much less illegal immigrants, have no Second Amendment rights. The fact that we have 21-year-old disturbed illegal aliens who were granted amnesty by Obama sitting in our schools and threatening to shoot them up should serve as a wake-up call to the broader violent threat from these policies.
Just last week, another illegal alien, 19-year-old Kevin Vasquez Funes, was arrested by ICE for threatening to shoot up East Boston High School. Funez was one of those “children” who came over the border in 2015 from El Salvador.
We are only now witnessing the systemic effects of DACA amnesty on the very issue of school safety that has embroiled the entire country in a political debate.
Remember, immigration is an elective policy. We have to deal with the problematic individuals we already have in this country and cannot deport. Violent immigrants, on the other hand, especially those who came here illegally, can and must be removed immediately. For people clamoring to “do something” about school violence, this is a no-brainer. Why should foreign gangs and drug smugglers even be a political issue? Yet liberal states and the legal profession are trying to protect them.
New York State sent out guidance telling the schools to “not ask questions” about immigration status and serve as “safe havens,” as my friend Shannon Joy pointed out on twitter:
President Trump rightfully called on Congress to defund sanctuary cities in his campaign rally for PA-18 congressional candidate Rick Saccone. However, that cry rings hollow if he continues to sign liberal budget bills that fund them, among other Democrat priorities. He must issue a statement of administration policy (SAP) threatening to veto any omnibus bill advanced this week that does not defund sanctuary cities and call for the expedited deportation of UACs.
Furthermore, the time has come to free up the states from the massive unfunded liability of educating illegal aliens, a legacy of the grotesque Plyler v. Doe decision from William Brennan in 1982. It’s bad enough that we have our own deranged youth terrorizing schools. Do we really need to import some of the most violent gang members from the rest of the world to kill our students, lower our academic standards, and crush us with the cost of overcrowding, discipline, and bilingual education? At the very least, states should be required to expel from schools illegal aliens who are gang members.
Sadly, a single district judge has been given the power to flood our schools with drugs and MS-13 due to a policy that shreds immigration law. When will Congress act on the courts?
Indeed, it’s time to #DoSomething for our children. (For more from the author of “‘For the Children’: MS-13, DACA Amnesty, and School Safety” please click HERE)
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