Adios, gangbangers
The government’s indictment this month of 17 members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 should leave no doubt about the savagery wreaked on Suffolk County — including the murders of four young men in April, lured into the woods to die in a hail of blows by machete and club.
Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde, based in Brooklyn, additionally pinned eight other killings on the crew, including a rub-out of a rival gang member that also killed a deli clerk.
Immigrants to America, legal or illegal, are usually law-abiding, contributing members of society. On rarest occasion, some leave blood and death in their wake — and must be rooted out with ferocity.
In this case, under aliases such as Strong, Satanico, Anticristo, Muerte, Mente, Smiley and Flash, children of the exodus from crimewracked El Salvador traded in guns and drugs, terrorizing Brentwood and nearby Long Island towns much as MS-13 associates have laid siege to communities from coast to coast.
Such crimes demand zero tolerance and unrelenting prosecution — and, pronto, express deportation back to El Salvador.
Yet when Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrived in Brentwood little more than two weeks after the massacre — promising to MS-13 gangsters, “We will find you. We will devastate your networks. We will starve your revenue sources, deplete your ranks and seize your profits” — immigrants’ rights advocates rallied in condemnation.
Granted, neither Sessions nor Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has taken pains to distinguish the threats of active, highly violent gangs to public safety from a broader, misbegotten effort under a January executive order from President Trump demanding publicity for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants as piddly as porn possession and resisting an officer.
Even more destructive was a simultaneous shift of priorities for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement actions, away from chiefly targeting dangerous criminals to sweeping up a far broader swath of the undocumented, even those believed to have obtained ID under false pretenses.
But some newcomers to America happen to be foul criminals. Throw the book at them, and then throw them out.