Trump urges police, immigration officials to be ‘rough’ on gangs terrorizing U.S.

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. — President Donald Trump on Friday called for police and immigration officials to be “rough” with suspected gang members in order to rid the country of “animals” he said are terrorizing communities.

“Please don’t be too nice,” Mr. Trump told police recruits at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, a heavily Latino suburb of New York. “Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know the way you put their hand so they don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody. … You can take that hand away.”

He implied that he was satisfied with rough handling of suspects by the police. “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon — you just see them thrown in, rough,” he said.

Scoffing at calls for political correctness, Mr. Trump also renewed his pledges to build a wall along the Mexican border. He blamed the Obama administration for admitting criminals into the United States.

“The previous administration enacted an opendoor policy to illegal immigrants from Central America,” he said. “As a result MS-13 surged into the country and scoured, just absolutely destroyed, so much in front of it.”

He referred to Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a primarily Salvadoran gang that started in Los Angeles in the 1980s and has spread into other communities. The gang is blamed for 17 killings in Long Island since the beginning of last year.