<p>President Trump visited New York City last week to speak about his plans to crack down on gang violence.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Together we&rsquo;re going to restore safety to our streets and peace to our communities and we&rsquo;re going to destroy the vile, criminal cartel MS-13 and many other gangs,&rdquo; said Trump on Friday as he spoke to a crowd of state and local law enforcement agencies at Suffolk County Community College in Long Island. ;</p>
<p>Suffolk County has seen 17 brutal murders, allegedly committed by MS-13, since the beginning of 2016 &ndash; the most famous being a case in which two teenage girls were killed with baseball bats and machetes. ;</p>
<p>On Thursday, ;the NYPD announced that two MS-13 gang members &ndash; code names &ldquo;Splinter&rdquo; and &#8220;Smoker&rdquo; &ndash; had been arrested and charged with the death of Fernando Gonzalez-Chavez, who was shot dead outside a convenience store on May 31st</p>
<p>During his speech, Trump repeatedly referred to gang members as &ldquo;animals&rdquo; and encouraged law enforcement to be physically rough during arrests. He blamed the gang for transforming Long Island&#8217;s &ldquo;peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods&rdquo; into &ldquo;blood-stained killing fields.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>&ldquo;They don&rsquo;t like shooting people because it&rsquo;s too quick, it&rsquo;s too fast,&rdquo; continued Trump. &ldquo;I was reading one of these animals was caught and explaining they like to knife &lsquo;em and cut &lsquo;em and let &lsquo;em die slowly because that way it&rsquo;s more painful.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Trump then went on to speak about MS-13&rsquo;s relationship with illegal immigration, blaming &#8220;weak borders and lax immigration enforcement&rdquo; for the gang&#8217;s recent growth and asking Congress to fund 10,000 additional ICE agents and more judges to help speed up deportations. &ldquo;We will find you, we will arrest you, we will jail you, and we will deport you,&rdquo; he promised.</p>
<p>Democrats have ;criticized Trump for portraying the gang as made up entirely of illegal immigrants and for using it as justification for his harsh immigration policies. During a recent field hearing held by a House homeland security subcommittee, witnesses said teens and undocumented immigrants are most vulnerable to becoming victims of MS-13 &ndash; especially in cases where communities fail to welcome and support them. ;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, AG Jeff Sessions traveled to El Salvador to speak about MS-13 from that side of the border. On Thursday, the Justice Department announced that prosecutors in El Salvador had charged 113 MS-13 gang members. ;</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>Mara Salvatrucha</em> ;(&ldquo;MS-13&rdquo;) is a particularly brutal street gang with known strongholds in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In 2012, it became the first such group to be designated a &ldquo;transnational criminal organization.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p>MS-13 originated in Los Angeles in the 1980&#8217;s as Salvadorans fled en masse to the US to escape civil war. The Justice Department estimates there are currently 30,000 MS-13 members worldwide; more than 10,000 of them live in the US. ;</p>
<p>The gang&#8217;s motto is &#8220;kill, rape, control&#8221; and its members are famous for their use of machetes. ;</p>
<p><strong>Editor&#8217;s note:</strong> This is one of the consequences of poor border security. MS-13 is a plague made more powerful by its presence in America. Thanks, Obama.</p>